Shaping Academia's Future: Coincidence or Design ? Exploring the Interplay of Identity and Serendipity in Scholarly Work (UCLA)
Call for Presentations for the 4th Annual ELTS Graduate Conference
Shaping Academia's Future: Coincidence or Design?
Exploring the Interplay of Identity and Serendipity in Scholarly Work
April 3-4 2025, UCLA, Royce Hall, Room 306
As early-stage scholars, we know that the future of Academia is in our hands. We need to reflect collectively on the shaping of new academic research connected to the societies we live in.
As individuals, we shape an "identity" – a social and coherent representation of who we are. Part of who we are is our research, to which we dedicate a considerable amount of our time, energy, and cognition. However, this representation is challenged by "coincidence." By "coincidence," we mean all the factors that denote an absence of control over our research choices. The scope is very broad: serendipitous moments, unexpected encounters, fortuitous encounters with texts or materials, spontaneous conversations, but also less "fortuitous" elements such as sociological factors, institutional structures and constraints, power dynamics in academia, geopolitical factors affecting research access or focus, technological advancements or limitations, historical events shaping research interests, and so on. Scholars constantly negotiate between their coherent self-representation and these uncontrollable structural aspects. This conference aims to highlight how claiming a place in our research for the personal, the unexpected, and the serendipitous, allows us to take a step toward an academic culture that is more inclusive of different ways of knowing, more responsive to the unpredictable nature of research and discovery, and more deeply connected to the society it serves.
Traditional academic conventions, such as grant proposals, often demand a "justificatory approach" where scholars construct logical narratives of their research path post hoc, omitting serendipitous influences like chance encounters or unexpected insights. In contrast, this conference invites graduate students to embrace a posture of introspection and self-reflection upon the coincidental, whether it be a fortuitous discovery or a conversation that sparks new lines of inquiry.
This conference hopes to create a more experimental but also more honest narrative of knowledge production that includes chance, serendipity, and (criticism of) academic determinism by opening a path that gives you the opportunity to challenge the way you look at your own research. We encourage submissions from a diverse range of disciplines—Humanities, Fine Arts, Social Sciences and Sciences that engage new forms of scholarship that integrate personal experiences into research, using diverse discourses (dialogues, poetry, plastic arts, etc.).
Presentations will be in English. Submissions may address but are not limited to:
- Power Dynamics & Identity in Academic Structures
- Serendipitous Intersections Across Disciplines
- Digital Agency & Methodological Evolution
- Personal Identity as Academic Innovation
- Creative Serendipity in Humanities Research
Please submit your proposal via email to eltsgradstudentconference@humnet.ucla.edu by January 31, 2024, 11:59 PM PST.
The email subject line must be formatted as follows: [LastName_FirstName]-Shaping Academia 2025. Attach a Word document titled exactly as the email's subject line.
This document must include: your name, email address, and institutional affiliation; an abstract for your presentation (maximum 250 words); and a short bio (maximum 100 words).
Individual presentations must be 20 minutes long. Acceptance notifications will be sent by February 15, 2024.
If you have any questions, feel free to contact us at the email address stated above.