After Empire, Against Empire: Rethinking Sovereignty in a Changing World Order (Conference)

Call for Contributions · International conference · Stockholm, 3-4 June, 2027 ·
Abstracts due: 30 December 2026
Organisers: Södertörn University (Sweden) and the University of Manitoba (Canada)
Funded by the Foundation for Baltic and East European Studies, Sweden.

Russia’s war against Ukraine has made questions of sovereignty urgent in Europe and beyond. This war is part of a wider shift in the world order. Borders are being tested by violence, international law is invoked selectively or set aside, and the rule of law and democracy itself are under pressure in many parts of the world. Sovereignty is often treated as a settled principle of international law, vested in the nation-state and expressed through territorial integrity and political independence. Yet the concept has a longer, more contested history, shaped by European state formation, empire, and colonial rule.

Early modern theorists such as Jean Bodin and Thomas Hobbes conceived of sovereignty in the context of absolutist monarchy, as a single, indivisible and supreme authority over a territory and its subjects. The age of revolutions transferred it to “the people” and the nation. In the twentieth century, sovereignty became the cornerstone of a legal order of formally equal nation-states. Each of these transfers was uneven. The new states of East Central Europe gained sovereignty after 1918 under “great-power” supervision and the constraints of the minority treaties. Decolonisation after 1945 extended sovereignty to former colonies, often within borders that empires had drawn. After 1991, the post-Soviet states gained independence, yet Moscow continued to treat their sovereignty as conditional.

This history gives rise to a tension that the conference seeks to explore. Sovereignty is at once a product of empire and the main defence against it. In much postcolonial and decolonial scholarship, sovereignty appears as part of the problem: a European form, spread through empire and bound up with territorial control and the violence of the nation-state. Seen from Kyiv, Vilnius or Chișinău today, sovereignty is instead the condition of political survival and of democratic self-government. Can the decolonial critique of sovereignty and the defence of sovereignty against imperial aggression speak to each other? What do East European experiences add to global debates on empire, sovereignty, coloniality and self-determination? We ask what becomes visible when sovereignty is examined from the perspective of societies whose political independence has been denied, constrained or treated as conditional. How do imperial histories shape contemporary claims to territory and authority? How might we understand sovereignty when it is exercised or contested not only by states but also by populations, international organisations, social movements and other non-state actors, or through archives and data infrastructures?

We particularly welcome historically grounded, empirically based papers that explore spatial and temporal variations of sovereignty. Comparative and transregional papers that connect Eastern Europe with other parts of the world are strongly encouraged. The conference aims to initiate an interdisciplinary dialogue and is open to historians, political theorists, legal scholars, anthropologists and scholars from related disciplines at all career stages.

Thematic strands
We invite proposals on topics including, but not limited to, the following:
• Sovereignty in colonial contexts and in decolonial thought: imperial hierarchies of sovereignty, anti-colonial claims to statehood, and decolonial critiques of the concept, in Eastern Europe and beyond.
• Concepts and languages of sovereignty: intellectual and conceptual histories of sovereignty in East European, Ukrainian and Baltic political thought.
• Sovereignty, nation-states, and international and transnational institutions: the League of Nations and the United Nations, the European Union, international courts, humanitarian agencies, and the authority they claim or exercise over states.
• Sovereignty in inter-imperial conflicts and tensions: the right to self-determination and discourses of “spheres of influence”.
• Popular sovereignty and political citizenship: the people as bearers of sovereignty, citizens’ self-organisation, and the crisis of democratic representation.
• New bearers and objects of sovereignty: data, archives, cultural heritage, language, energy, land and digital infrastructure.
• Fragmented and distributed sovereignty: occupied and annexed territories, de facto states, governments in exile, and shared or pooled sovereignty.
• Sovereignty and the state of exception: sovereignty under war and occupation, emergency rule, humanitarian and military intervention, and international governance of reconstruction.

Submission guidelines
Please send an abstract of up to 300 words and a short biographical note (up to 150 words) by 30 December 2026 to both organisers: oksana.dudko@umanitoba.ca and yuliya.yurchuk@sh.se.
Applicants will be notified of the outcome by 15 January 2027.
Selected participants will be asked to submit draft papers by 15 April 2027.
The organisers will cover accommodation in Stockholm for the duration of the conference. Participants are expected to arrange and fund their own travel.
For further information, please contact the organisers: Oksana Dudko (oksana.dudko@umanitoba.ca) and Yuliya Yurchuk (yuliya.yurchuk@sh.se).