Submissions

Submissions and presentations must be in English and should address the conference theme or one of its five sub-themes.

Abstract submissions: Individual research abstracts must be submitted through the dedicated submission form on the official i-Rec 2027 conference website. [Submit an abstract →]

Panel proposals: Panel proposals should include a title, a brief description, the organisers’ names and affiliations, and abstracts for three to four papers. [Submit a panel proposal →]

The conference

We invite researchers, practitioners, artists and policymakers to discuss how disaster memory influences reconstruction efforts and vulnerability reduction. Participants will explore whose experiences enter public memory, how stakeholders assign responsibility for disasters and risk creation, and how knowledge from past disasters informs recovery and vulnerability reduction.

We invite academic and practical contributions from anthropology, architecture, engineering, geography, law, psychology, political science, social work, sociology and urban planning, as well as other social sciences and the arts. The conference programme includes research presentations, workshops, exhibitions, a student design competition, a photo competition, and field visits.

During the field visits, participants will have the opportunity to explore ongoing reconstruction initiatives in Adana and Hatay, two provinces affected by the Southeastern Anatolia earthquakes in February 2023. Adana was also affected by the 1998 Adana–Ceyhan earthquake and Hatay is still recovering from the extensive destruction caused by the 2023 earthquakes. Participants will discuss recovery, reconstruction, vulnerability reduction, and heritage conservation with residents, local authorities and civil society organisations.


We have divided our main theme into five sub-themes for panel and paper submissions:

1. Disaster accountability, risk, and social justice

Disaster memory is deeply tied to how accountability and responsibility for destruction are attributed and how social justice is defined. Collective remembrance can expose systemic failures or obscure them. Here we examine how debates over responsibility are linked to public memory and how survivors use commemorative acts to demand justice and construct claims. Sometimes disaster memorials focus on heroism, unity, or inevitable fate. In many cases, they ignore systemic failures in planning, construction, design, economic systems, and public security. What do these omissions mean for public trust and future risk reduction? Here we welcome contributions examining legal accountability, memory activism, institutional silences, transitional justice, advocacy, the role of civil society, state-led discourse about risk, archival evidence, and political uses of anniversaries and disaster narratives.

2. Landscapes of commemoration and preservation

Decisions about what to preserve, demolish, relocate, or rebuild shape how disasters are remembered. Here we examine the physical traces of disaster and recovery in buildings, infrastructure, and settlements. In this area of analysis, we address formal memorial sites, such as museums and monuments. We also look at evolving spaces of remembrance, such as preserved ruins, adaptive reuse projects, and rebuilt neighbourhoods. In many cases, street grids, housing typologies, infrastructural shifts, and debris fields help produce collective memory. Quite often, technical standards, cultural values, new policy, and political priorities guide spatial decisions and the transformation of territories. In turn, these choices shape narratives of responsibility and how, and why, events are remembered. Here we invite participants to reflect on post-disaster morphology, spatial restructuring, memorial landscapes, and the material traces of reconstruction.

3. Cultural practices, art, and storytelling in post-disaster contexts

People often remember disasters through stories, rituals, performances, plastic art, sculptures, music, literature, movies, documentaries, and digital media. Creative practices carry memory across time and borders, but memories also gain new meanings as they pass to younger generations. Practices often circulate through migration, diaspora networks, and cultural exchanges, and grassroots artistic initiatives often challenge selective official memory. Cultural practices often help highlight marginalized voices and create new spaces for dialogue and mourning. Here we will examine how practices help express notions of grief, pain, change and continuity, and how they contribute to document events and challenge official narratives. We welcome contributions on photography, film, oral histories, intergenerational storytelling, mourning rituals, and community-led digital archives.

4. Disaster memory in governance and policy

Governments and public institutions shape memory through education, monuments, museums, official ceremonies, and urban planning decisions. We will examine how disaster histories and narratives influence risk reduction and recovery. When do past disasters lead to genuine policy reform? Which experiences are excluded when institutions control disaster lessons and history? We invite participants to reflect on the causes and consequences of specific public records, state-led narratives, curriculum design, institutional commemoration frameworks, disaster preparedness education, the politics of remembrance, and comparative policy approaches to historical disasters.

5. Disaster risk, climate change, and vulnerability reduction

Reconstruction offers a critical window of opportunity to reduce vulnerability. Yet rebuilding can also reproduce inequalities, create new risks, and overlook climate change impacts. We seek to examine how reconstruction advances, or impedes, disaster risk reduction and climate action. We will explore how past experiences and local memories inform disaster risk reduction and recovery strategies. We welcome research on housing, infrastructure, settlement planning, livelihood recovery, and ecosystem restoration. We particularly invite studies on how recovery decisions affect different social groups and minorities, how unequal access to safe housing is produced, how climate adaptation is justified, how relocation is legitimised, and where and how communities get involved in risk reduction efforts, and how scholarship can adopt critical perspectives on resilience and adaptation.