Special Issue: Minding the Present. Bodies, Places, Matter in and between Australia and Europe

Deadline for proposals: 15 March 2026

Taking its cue from a very vibrant conference held in Padova (Italy) in September 2025, the Journal of the European Association for Studies of Australia is seeking articles that examine the shaping experiences, identities, and perceptions of the present as a catalyst to urgent action both in Australia—with a special alertness to the very rooted cultures of Indigenous Australia—and in the complex relations between Europe and Australia.  

Central to our exploration is the ontology of the present—the hic et nunc (here and now)—together with the concepts of present orientation and the re-figurations of time/s. We will focus on how, through discourse, art, literature and geopolitical praxis, we can understand, experience, and potentially reshape both our perception of time, particularly in relation to the present moment. We are especially interested in investigating the present as a dynamic space situated between archives of the past (Hall, 2001) and what P. Saint-Amour has defined as traumatic anticipations of the future (Saint-Amour, 2015), taking into account nonlinear, non-Western and Indigenous cosmologies and heterotopias. In this way, we assert that, as Hodgson suggests, “the present moment is not… a static fixed coalescence but a super complexity, the dynamism of which determines its ability for anticipation” (2013, p. 31).

We invite contributions that address the following topics (but are not limited to them):

  • The role of cultural, literary, artistic archives in shaping present understandings and future projections
  • Temporal re-configurations in literature, performing arts, anthropology and politics
  • Anticipatory practices and their impact on literature and art
  • Nonlinear and alternative conceptions of time in artistic, cultural and literary practices
  • Present-oriented practices in various disciplines and contexts
  • Performing arts as a medium for exploring and transforming the present
  • Corporeality and embodiment in relation to time and cultural contexts
  • Geographies of the present: making and claiming places and spaces in and between Australia and Europe
  • Migrations and diasporas: bodies in motion through time and space
  • Resurgence of Indigenous knowledge systems and practices, including temporal philosophies, relational cosmologies, and storytelling
  • Regeneration initiatives: rethinking time in ecological contexts and texts
  • Relationality: how do Indigenous epistemologies challenge and expand Western notions of the time, especially the concept of the present?
  • Ecologies and environment: comparing Australian and European perspectives on orientation, the immediate present, care, and rootedness
  • Environmental resurgence and regeneration initiatives as forms of immediate care and reorientation
  • Cultural and literary approaches to the ontology of the present
  • Activist strategies and calls for action in contemporary Australia and in Australia-Europe relations
  • Collective memory and forgetting and their role in shaping present anxieties and actions

We particularly encourage papers that explore the interplay between archives of the past, the present moment, and anticipations of the future, examining how these temporal dimensions interact in the Australian and Australia-Europe contexts, especially those that draw from literature, the performing arts, anthropology, postcolonial studies, gender studies, trauma and disability studies, politics and legal studies.

Submitted articles of 5,000-8,500 words must follow the format specified in submission guidelines. They should be submitted as one document with no indication of author’s identity. A separate document shoud contain author’s name, institutional affiliation if appropriate, e-mail address and a brief biography to be used if the article is accepted. Please refer to the Journal Submission Guidelines and make sure your documents are correct and properly edited: https://www.australianstudies.eu/?page_id=96

Send your articles to both:

General Editor, Marilena Parlati (marilena.parlati@unipd.it)

Assistant Editor, Claudia Davidson-Novosivchei (claudia.novosivschei@gmail.com)