Call For Papers: The Body in History
Interdisciplinary Postgraduate and Early Career Researchers Conference
Monday 6 July 2026
University of Oxford
Academic study is often concerned with the mind, with ideas, reason, and fact which are implicitly set against the messy, complicated realities of human embodiment. However, recent decades have seen a turn towards the body across the humanities and social sciences, a wide-ranging and dynamic topic. Alongside this ‘somatic turn’ in academia, contemporary culture displays something of an obsession with the body, its appearance, performance, and management. Moreover, even when our research does not directly touch on the body, we all have bodies, and our engagements with the university and archive as well as broader society are informed by our different experiences of embodiment.
The Body in History Conference will bring together Postgraduate and Early Career Researchers across disciplines interested in the history, representation, and experience of the human body and its environments. It will provide a unique opportunity to cross disciplinary divides, network, and share insights.
We invite proposals for 15 minute papers addressing any topics related to the Body in History.
Papers could consider – but are not limited to – topics such as:
● The relationship between body, mind, and self
● Disciplining and controlling the body
● Gender, sexuality, and the body
● Race, ethnicity, and the body
● Bodily processes e.g eating, sleeping, bleeding, defecating, childbearing
● Medicalised bodies, sickness, and disability
● Reproductive bodies
● Body image and beauty standards
● The body in space, place, action, and environment
● Emotions and the body
● Non-human and posthuman bodies
● The modern body and the influence of technology
● The body in performance, music, theatre, and art
● Writing about and through the body
● Bodies in translation
● The body in the archive/university and the question of subjectivity/positionally
Please submit a 200 word abstract and 100 word biography to bihn@history.ox.ac.uk by Sunday 15th March.
There are no conference fees. Unfortunately, funding is not available to reimburse travel or accommodation costs. Refreshments will be provided. Please contact the organisers bihn@history.ox.ac.uk for further information.
Body in History Network is part of TORCH Student Networks
