Call for Contributions – EISA 2026 Lisbon Section on (Post-)Socialist Internationalism
IPS Section
Dear colleagues,
Luis Aue (University of Bielefeld) and I are looking forward to convene a section at EISA 2026 this year in the beautiful city of Lisbon titled:
“(Post-)Socialist Internationalism: Knowledge, Positionality, and Global Politics” (PoSoc)
This section explores how (post-)socialist internationalisms have shaped global politics and continue to resonate today. Building on our intense discussions during our panels at EISA 2025 in Bologna, we aim to deepen this conversation and invite contributions in the form of:
- Paper abstracts
- Full panel proposals
- Roundtable suggestions
We welcome a wide range of perspectives ranging from historical, sociological, and contemporary. Topics might include, for example, analyses of Zohran Mamdani’s political vision for New York or investigations into socialist secret services. Diverse methodological approaches and critical reflections are encouraged.
Submission portal: https://eisa-net.org/abstract-submission-guidelines-pec-2026/
Deadline: 19 February 2026
Full section call: https://eisa-net.org/sections-list-pec-2026/
Section Overview:
In an era of contested truths, algorithmic knowledge production, and geopolitical realignment, questions of authenticity, positionality, and epistemic authority have become central to IR scholarship. While postcolonial theories have successfully recovered alternative imaginaries of global politics, the contributions of socialist worldmaking remain strikingly absent from current debates. At the same time, disinformation, epistemic inequality, and democratic backsliding challenge how knowledge is produced, circulated, and authorized—while socialism as a political response reappears on the global agenda. This section addresses these gaps by revisiting the underexplored internationalisms of the socialist world and their legacies. We ask:
- What counts as “real” knowledge about historical events surrounding the so-called Cold War and socialist worldmaking?
- Who is entitled to produce it, under what conditions, and what narratives are deemed appropriate for life experiences in (authoritarian) socialist pasts?
- How do these concerns intersect with contemporary socialist imaginaries and their global reverberations?
PoSoc brings together scholars working on past state-socialist projects, the post-socialist condition, and current transnational socialist movements, while interrogating how technological and institutional transformations reshape epistemic authority today. Key to this exploration is re-examining foundational IR concepts, such as transnational cooperation, peace and security, and ontologies of the political and the economic, from the vantage point of the "Global East". We welcome diverse methodologies and reflections on approaching the post socialist internationalism in an era of contested truths and algorithmic knowledge production.
Please feel free to share this call widely within your networks. We look forward to your contributions!
Best regards,
Maria Ketzmerick-Calandrino & Luis Aue
Dr. Maria Ketzmerick-Calandrino (she/her)
https://sites.google.com/view/mariaketzmerick/
Research Fellow // Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin
Crafting Entanglements: Afro-Asian Pasts of the Global Cold War (CRAFTE)