EnPAx Icon Call for Abstracts — Symposium on Environmental Peacebuilding in Mountain Areas: Bio-cultural Diversity and the Arts of Living on Damaged Slopes

Oct 13, 2026 (Deadline: 2026-12-01) | Environmental Peacebuilding Association and Unit for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Innsbruck
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The Environmental Peacebuilding Association (EnPAx) and the Unit for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Innsbruck invite abstracts for a three-day symposium on environmental peacebuilding in mountain areas.Mountains are among the most persistently contested spaces on Earth. Terrain shapes warfare and borders, extraction and water geopolitics, livelihoods and climate-related hazards. Conflicts here are layered: a dispute over a mine or a dam is at once a dispute over autonomy, sacred ground, and downstream water. Yet, three fields rarely meet on the slope:

  • environmental peacebuilding still tends to treat mountains as the upstream input into someone else’s river basin;
  • critical peace research rarely considers terrain, ice, or more-than-human relations as political matters; and
  • mountain research has a comparatively limited vocabulary for violence and contestation.

This symposium brings these fields together and advances a mountain-centric approach. It draws on political ecology, multispecies approaches, political economy, cryopolitics, rights of nature, and pluriversal perspectives.

Contributions are invited under five themes and an open theme:

I.        Water, Ice, and Hazard

II.      Frontiers of Conflict: Borders, Militarization, and Extraction

III.    Bio-cultural Diversity, Coexistence, and Recognition

IV.    Sacred Heights, Memory, and the Arts of Peace

V.      Doing Mountain Peacebuilding: Methods, Technologies, and Practice

VI.    Open 

Information on the conference themes is available here. Gender and intersectionality, as well as the political economy of mountain peacebuilding, are cross-cutting concerns for all themes.

We welcome contributions from scholars across disciplines, practitioners, policy makers, and artists. They may take the form of presentations, posters, panels, facilitated roundtable, training courses, case clinics, researcher-practitioner labs, or artistic contributions.

  • Format: the symposium is designed as an in-person event. A limited number of online sessions will be offered for contributors who are unable to travel.
  • Language: the working language is English. If you would prefer to present in another language, please let us know in your submission.
  • Publication: full papers are not required, but the organizers anticipate inviting selected contributions to a special issue of Environment and Security.
  • Fees: EUR 180 (standard) and EUR 90 (reduced), with a fee waiver for those unable to pay. A limited number of travel fellowships is planned, subject to funding.

Abstracts received by 1 December 2026 will receive priority consideration, and their proposers will be notified by 31 January 2027, in good time for visa procedures. Abstracts submitted after 1 December 2026 will be reviewed as space permits.

The full call for abstracts is available here.

Responses to FAQs are available here.   

To submit an abstract, please fill out the form at https://www.environmentalpeacebuilding.org/symposia/mountain-areas-2027/submit-proposal. You need to be signed in to environmentalpeacebuilding.org; creating an account is free, quick and easy. 

If you have any questions, please contact conference@environmentalpeacebuilding.org.