[EASST-Eurograd] Call for Abstracts: (Un-)Making Democracy, 7-8 September 2026, Krákow

[Voß, Jan-Peter via Eurograd]

Right next to this year’s EASST and ECPR conferences, we invite for a workshop on “(Un)Making Democracy: Evaluative and Normative Positionings in Post-foundational Studies of Democracy” bringing together constructivist, post-foundational, and praxeological perspectives on democracy from both Political Science and Science and Technology Studies.

 

The workshop will start on Monday afternoon, Sep 7 (from 14:00), with keynotes by Michael Saward and Brice Laurent on “Re-thinking democracy” in each one of the two fields. The call below is for registering interest to participate and for submitting proposals for presentations on Tuesday morning, Sep 8 (until 14:00).

 

Convenors: Nina Frahm (Aarhus), Iñaki Goñi (Santiago de Chile), Melisa Ross (Firenze) & Jan-Peter Voß (Aachen)

 

Call for Abstracts: 2nd Democracy-in-the-Making-Workshop, 7-8 September 2026, Krákow

(Un)Making Democracy: Evaluative and Normative Positionings in Post-foundational Studies of Democracy

 

Against pre-defined ontologies and theorizations, post-foundational approaches in Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Democracy Studies (DS) foreground the plural, contingent, and

situated practices and articulations involved in the making of democracy. However, beyond a shared interest in the unmaking of essentialist understandings of democracy across both fields, we also find a joint struggle in reflecting on evaluative and normative positionings in post-foundational studies of democracy. There is an ongoing search for articulating an evaluative grounding for differentiating specific qualities of multiple democratic practices – and a concern with the appropriate role and place of our own and other actors’ normativities in (de-/re-)constructions of democracy. In this workshop, we seek to ask openly how democracy is done and articulated at various sites.

Should we, as STS and DS scholars, lay claim to defining what makes a practice democratic, and if so, how? This questioning may include the challenge of identifying specific empirical phenomena as manifestations of democracy a-priori. It may be geared towards a posteriori evaluations of democratic qualities of particular practices and performances. It can involve deliberately opening up the plurality of concepts and norms of democracy claimed in a given setting and through different actors. It can also seek to differentiate how performances of democracy constitute their own ontological foundations, such as the people (demos) and their agency to govern (kratia) – and perhaps evaluate different ways of establishing ontological foundations for how reflexive, transparent, responsive they are.

In all of these instances, post-foundational approaches and commitments to multiplicity and contingency are faced with acts of evaluative and/or normative positioning vis-à-vis the ongoing (un)making of democracy, including questions such as: What qualifies particular practices as democratic? How can they be differentiated? Are they all equally good? Who should be involved in settling frameworks for qualifying practices as democratic, and with what role for research in STS and DS? Which evaluative or normative frames of democracy and its qualities (should) inform post-foundational research strategies and agendas, and how can they be better disclosed and made visible? To wrestle with these questions is all the more important in the context of contemporary diagnoses of a crisis of democracy and corollary calls for the re-claiming of democracy across sites: where do we, as researchers, position ourselves in the unfolding of such crisis and its politics?

In continuation of the first ‘Democracy in the Making’ meeting held in Aachen at the beginning of this year, we invite interested scholars in STS, DS, and neighboring fields to a workshop of two half days, in the afternoon of September 7 and the morning of September 8 in Krákow. Monday afternoon will set the scene, presenting key approaches from the two fields of STS and DS, with a double-keynote by Michael Saward and by Brice Laurent, each followed by commentaries and open discussion. On Tuesday morning, we will continue discussing questions around “normativities” identified at the Aachen workshop by trialing particular proposals on how to understand, engage with, and do evaluative positionings in post-foundational studies of democracy.

 

Apply as contributor

We invite interested participants from both fields to hold 20-minutes presentations (plus 20 minutes discussion) around the conceptual and methodological questions outlined above. We can host up to six

presentations. We will not request full papers in advance of the workshop, but short concept notes (2-5 pages). We are particularly interested in contributions that

• systematize and map existing concepts and traditions of evaluative grounding and normativity in studies of democracy in STS/DS.
• critically engage with theoretical, methodological, and empirical challenges of evaluative and normative positioning towards the (un)making of democracy.
• foreground the implied values and normativity of particular theoretical and methodological choices in empirical studies of democracy-in-the-making.
• present interventions in research, public debate, social movements or policy concerned with evaluative and normative claims about democracy.

Please submit a short abstract of 300 words to nina...@cc.au.dk by July 17. We will notify about acceptance by July 27 and follow up with more details regarding the workshop format and timeline asap.

 

Apply as participant

The workshop will also be open to non-presenting participants. Please register with nina...@cc.au.dk by August 15 to attend. This helps us with room planning. Priority will be given to participants attending both days.