top of page

​

 

Re-examining Education and Peace in a Divided World

San Francisco,  March 28-April 1, 2026 

 

Location: Hilton Union Square Hotel in San Francisco, California

Format: Onsite and Virtual Participation

The DEADLINE is August 26, 2025, at 11:59 p.m. ET.

 

Please consider submitting your proposals to our SIG: 21st Century Educational Alternatives: Confronting Racial Capitalism, Patriarchy, Militarism, and the Climate Crisis 

​

Sponsored by The Alternatives Project (TAP)   https://www.thealternativesproject.org/

​

We welcome proposals from across disciplines, regions, and methodologies that engage the broader dimensions of Comparative and International Education. In addition to paper presentations, the conference will also welcome roundtable presentations, poster presentations, panel or symposium presentations, book launches, and workshop sessions.

​

At our SIG, we understand “peace” to mean much more than the absence of armed conflict between states. We look deeper into the systemic causes of the many forms of violence and conflict that CIES refers to in the 2026 conference theme as “a divided world.” We unpack the CIES invitation to include transnational political and economic tensions, structural inequality, unregulated wealth accumulation, and corporate influence in politics and governance, environmental instability, the arms trade, lawlessness, gun violence, forced migration and human trafficking, nuclear proliferation, bullying and harassment amplified on social media, and accompanying erosion of social solidarity and comity, as interwoven threats to social harmony, stability and life itself. In the name of our SIG, we identify key drivers of the many forms of violence and conflict that contribute to the polycrisis of today: racial capitalism, patriarchy, authoritarianism, militarism, and climate change denialism. 

We therefore subscribe to the more nuanced understanding of “peace,” after Galtung, as including “negative peace” - an absence of active conflict or violence; “positive peace” - the development of conditions for all in society to live without fear, precarity, poverty, exclusion, within a broadly agreed economy and political system; and “pluralistic cultures of peace” - peaceful co-existence of culturally different forms of positive peace within and among nations. The TAP Alternatives SIG invites proposal submissions that further analyze unseen structural forms of violence and the deeper drivers of conflict while highlighting promising educational alternatives that promote positive peace and pluralistic cultures of peace in our divided world. We encourage submissions of alternatives generated through participatory praxis in all spheres of social life, including the state, the economy, the workplace, social and cultural spheres, media, technology, and, of utmost importance for CIES, the education system. 

​

The CIES theme is meant as evocative, not restrictive and your paper, presentation, or panel proposal can engage it on any level. You can propose a panel with up to five papers on a topic of your choice, an individual paper that might align with one of the suggested topics below, a workshop, or a poster session. We are particularly interested in research and perspectives from the Global South. 

Some of the themes for panels you might be working on may align with these ideas:

​

  • 1. Peace is Not Neutral: A Decolonial Critique of Liberal Peace Frameworks. Proposals that examine how peace is used to justify settler colonialism, international interventions, and capitalist development.

  • 2. Ubuntu and Buen Vivir: Relational Cosmologies of Peace in African and Andean Pedagogies. Proposals that explore community-based peace traditions that emphasize harmony, reciprocity, and ecological balance.

  • 3. Feminist Peace Pedagogies: Care, Resistance, and the Refusal of Gendered Violence. Proposals that analyze how peace is reconceptualized through the lens of feminist, queer, and trans liberation struggles.

  • 4. Militarism in the Classroom: Schooling the War Machine and Imagining Demilitarized Education. Proposals that discuss how curricula, security systems, and policy frameworks reproduce militarism and how educators resist.

  • 5. Peace as Presence: Paulo Freire and the Radical Pedagogy of Hope. Proposals that frame peace as an active, hopeful, justice-seeking praxis grounded in Freirean dialogue and love.

​

Other research themes could include:

​

  • War, peace, tyranny, and democratization in the 21st Century? What is the role of peace education in promoting these?

  • What is the relationship between peace, resistance, creative alternatives, and social transformation?

  • The Climate Crisis, Migration, and its Impact on Education and Peace

  • Education, Peace, and Social Movements 

  • Peace, Youth Movements and Organizing 

  • Education and the Re-emergence of Labor Activism

  • Artificial Intelligence, Racial Capitalism, Education Financing and Policy

  • Global and Cross-National Perspectives on Black, Feminist and Queer Movements in and through Education

  • EcoSocialism and Eco Pedagogy

  • Educational Alternatives: Global Examples of Concrete Praxis 

  • U.S. Economic Wars against Societies Pursuing Alternatives to Racial Capitalism

The call for submissions period is now open, and please note that proposals are due on August 26, 2025. See additional submission information below.

 

The deadline for all submission types is August 26, 2025, at 11:59 pm ET. Please note that the deadline will not be extended. Please carefully review the CIES submission information for details on presentation formats, submission requirements, and review criteria.  Any CIES member or non-member may submit proposals; however, non-members must become members to present at the CIES Conference. If you already have a CIES username and password, use them to log in to the All Academic submission system. If you are unsure whether you have an account or have forgotten your username, please email membership@cies.us.

bottom of page