Recent generations of historians and sociologists have pursued their research and teaching amid a proliferation of ‘post-’ movements- Over the past half-century, academia has rarely if ever reached consensus on a comprehensive grand narrative- Debates about and among disciplines, nuanced methodological shifts, and divergences in terminology all give reason to hope that we will avoid signing on to all-inclusive theories and grand narratives that have evolved from Eurocentrism and offer little escape from its clutches-

Nevertheless, it is evident in the twenty-first century that a great number of these ‘turns’ have merely been transitory moments of resistance or, at best, reactionary gestures to a grand narrative we have not entirely departed- Ever since the Enlightenment, and especially over the past century of scholarship, Eurocentrism has been virtually the exclusive source of vocabulary, imagery, objects, language, legal infrastructure, ‘geopolitical imaginary’, tools, executive leverage, and even the geographical orientation by which we routinely make sense of ourselves, our histories, our futures, and our surroundings- Political correctness is still performed along axes of ‘west’ and ‘east’, ‘north’ and ‘south’- Knowledge and capital are still produced and disseminated in specific forms within the colonial imperatives of supply-and-create-false-demand- Even in actively centrifugal and anti-hegemonic approaches such as postcolonial studies, theories of local–global entanglements, transnational studies, feminist approaches to history and sociology, and history from below, ‘Europe’ has sustained its rather invisible power as the norm with which other thoughts, other definitions, other practices, other forms of knowledge, other temporalities, and other spatialities are compared-
The interdisciplinary conference Done with Eurocentrism?, hosted by the BGHS and based at Bielefeld University, will offer a platform for examining our trajectories away from Eurocentrism, for evaluating the sustainability of our strategies of diversifying our methodological toolboxes and facilitating theoretical border-crossings, and for turning our attention to knowledge produced in many languages and centres around the globe- Furthermore, the conference seeks to highlight methodologically viable techniques, developed in different communities, for re-mapping the world to account for a wider range of standards, needs, practices, values, and concerns- We invite analysis of what this de-centralization process has achieved, or failed to achieve, and, ultimately, call upon participants to appraise how far from Eurocentrism we have come by this point in the twenty-first century.
The topics of interest to the 8th BGHS Annual Seminar include, but are not limited to:
- Tracing and mapping latent Eurocentrism in research questions, units, definitions, and content in knowledge-production practices such as writing, teaching, and beyond
- Identifying the Eurocentric canon, whose various aspects research beyond Eurocentrism aims to challenge, by:
- Questioning academic traditions and matters of (inter-/trans-)disciplinarity
- Recognizing the power of definitions and defying monopolies of concepts
- Welcoming diversity in geographical scaling and historical positioning
- Identifying localities and individuals and acknowledging their agency despite their relations to globalities and communities
- Examining questions of theory, methodology, and empiricism beyond Eurocentrism
- Addressing limits of presentation, reception, and dissemination of knowledge beyond universities, academic journals, and the ‘scientific’ languages of the former ‘colonizers’
- Examining the multiplicity of centres/canons beyond Eurocentrism and their effects on and conversations with Eurocentrism

The conference invites paper and poster proposals that touch upon one or more of these topics within various (trans)disciplinary contexts in history and the social sciences-
Researchers across a range of disciplines and stages of their careers who are interested in giving either paper or poster presentations at the Annual Seminar should submit an abstract of no more than 250 words along with a two-page CV to the conference organisers at: annualseminar [at] uni-bielefeld.de.
The deadline for proposals is 15 January 2016.
We plan to publish an edited volume including a selection of papers from the event in our open-access, peer-reviewed, e-journal InterDisciplines.
Furthermore, depending on the number of poster applications and the quality of their design and presentation, posters might enter a competition for a book voucher-
Please note that the BGHS offers financial support to graduate students who are selected to present at the Annual Seminar, including accommodation and a portion of the travel expenses, depending on the total travel expenses of all participants- You are therefore advised to indicate in your application whether you would like to be considered for the travel stipend- Speakers will be responsible for their own daily expenses.
Please note that the conference language is English.
Proposers will be notified by 15 February 2016 whether their abstract has been accepted-
The CfP and additional information about the BGHS Annual Seminar are available at: http://www.uni-bielefeld.de/(en)/bghs/Programm/Ansem/.