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EUPeace Conference 2025

“Advancing Justice, Peace and Inclusiveness in Times of AI”

Conference Date and Venue: University of West Bohemia in Pilsen, Pilsen, Czech Republic;
22-24 September 2025

CALL FOR PAPERS 

In an increasingly AI-driven world, how can we advance justice, peace, and inclusiveness? The second EUPeace Conference will provide an interdisciplinary platform for discussing AI’s far-reaching implications on societal conflicts, environmental justice, migration, human rights, and global health.

Building upon the expertise and contributions of the EUPeace Research Hubs, the conference will center on the impact of AI in shaping contemporary global issues. Recognizing the importance of a comprehensive and multi-disciplinary research landscape in fostering peace and justice, contributions addressing topics beyond Artificial Intelligence are equally welcome. Thus, the conference will bring together a wide range of disciplines, fostering a dynamic and diverse dialogue on the pressing societal challenges of our time. It will also provide valuable insights into how research enhances teaching by delivering current knowledge, enriching course content with practical applications, and stimulating critical thinking through evidence-based perspectives.

The various panels at the conference can address not only the conference theme but also different topics related to the alliance. Below you will find the Call for Papers for the various conference topics of the EUPeace Research Hubs. Each Research Hub will collect and select the submissions for its panels.

Format and Submission Guidelines

The conference will feature keynote lectures, panel discussions, and workshops, fostering dialogue among scholars, teachers, practitioners, and policymakers. Papers can address the various topics mentioned below from different methodological and disciplinary perspectives. Papers focusing on the translation of research into teaching and research-based teaching, as well as specifically the role of AI in academic teaching, are particularly welcome. Early career researchers and doctoral candidates are strongly encouraged to submit.

 Abstract Submission: Please submit an abstract (200–400 words) outlining your research and its relevance to the conference themes.

Deadline for Submissions: March 31, 2025.

Notification of Acceptance: April 30, 2025.

The Research Hubs' Call for Papers:

1. Thinking about peace and security in the age of hybridity and violent hegemonic transition
2. Climate Science and Just Transition 
3. Migration, Borders, and Human Rights in Contemporary Contexts
4. Inclusive Health and Well-Being

1) Thinking about peace and security in the age of hybridity and violent hegemonic transition

Europe and the world at large find themselves at a crossroads, due to the profound crisis affecting fundamental pillars of the 20th century world-system’s architecture. In particular, the immense and increasingly violent transition underway geopolitically and geoeconomically, is accompanied by, and combined with, a complex set of radical structural transformations which go so far as to concern – in their processes as well as in their effects – not only the historical dimension of our individual and collective existence as human beings, but even the anthropological one. One of the implications of this is the articulation of a new polyhedral security paradigm. This paradigm includes: 1) the rise of illiberal politics both within the Western bloc and outside of it, undermining the post-Cold War order based on international norms; 2) a multipronged socioenvironmental crisis formed by interlinked challenges around climate change, migration flows and social justice; and 3) new forms of knowledge creation and information consumption driven by AI, fake news, populism and algorithmic skewing that shape public discourse and behaviour; 4) an unbridled and generalized race to rearmament, and to the transformation of economic structures, worldwide, according to the logic proper to war systems.

In the face of all these challenges, the Research Hub on Security and Conflict Transformation invites contributions to its two panels at the EUPeace Research Impact Conference 2025. We are looking for innovative and thought-provoking contributions around what do peace and security entail as we enter the second quarter of the 21st century. We welcome disciplinary, methodological and geographical diversity. We also encourage both papers that present robust research and conclusions as well as work in progress and new frameworks to interpret and analyse the themes here presented.

Some areas of particular interest are:

• Technology, information management and public discourse: from AI to fake news and algorithms
• New forms of warfare: hybridity, asymmetry and beyond
• The EU and its neighbourhood policy
• From negative to positive peace: where is Europe heading?
• Conflicts and migration flows
• The securitisation of socioeconomic wellbeing: narratives around climate transition, health, migration, inflation, identity and others
• The increasingly articulated and dense intertwining, on a global scale, between the logics and interests that are more properly geopolitical and  those that are more properly geo-economic; including the interplay between technology, economics and politics in the redefinition of the world order (e.g.: securing the global supply chain, economic decoupling, ‘chip wars’, the new space race and others).

Contact for submissions: Mario López Areu & Manuela Stranges.

2) Climate Science and Just Transition 

The  EUPeace Research Hub on Climate Science and Just Transition combines the partners' strengths in the Alliance to reinforce research in the interdisciplinary fields of climate science and environmental justice. The RH aims to better understand the current conflict dynamics related to climate changes with which Europe is confronted, placing special emphasis on innovative methods and research designs. In particular, recent advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), primarily driven by machine learning, present numerous opportunities to address climate change risks and the associated conflicts - whether armed or otherwise. AI can support both climate change adaptation (e.g., improving climate disaster prediction) and mitigation (e.g., aiding industrial decarbonization), as well as boost ecosystem conservation and management (e.g., in combination with remote sensing technologies). However, there are also several contradictions and unintended consequences, such as the massive energy consumption and environmental impact (with related ethical issues) of growing data centers or the use of AI to spread misinformation about climate change.

The session aims to provide a valuable platform for interdisciplinary discussions on the interconnected topics of climate science, climate-related conflicts, and just transition. Contributions connecting these topics to AI's potential benefits and risks as a tool to support humanity against climate change risks are particularly welcome. 

Key themes for exploration include, but are not limited to: 

• sustainable development
• food, agroecology, and consumption
• energy provision, technologies, and infrastructure
• climate change and (human) health
• university as an actor and a field of action in climate adaptation
• climate adaptation in cities and regions
• climate change, emerging conflicts, and population movements
• climate change, natural resource extraction, and just energy transition
• climate change, circular economy and its implementation in companies

Contact for submissions: Alfonso Senatore.

3) Migration, Borders, and Human Rights in Contemporary Contexts

The Research Hub on Migration and Human Rights of EUPeace invites contributions for its upcoming Autumn Conference, focusing on the complex interplay between human rights, migration, and border practices in post-migrant societies. This event aims to foster interdisciplinary dialogues across fields such as law, political science, history, cultural studies, health sciences, and media studies, addressing critical questions in migration governance and human rights.

Migration and border dynamics remain pivotal issues in global governance, raising essential questions about human rights, societal inclusion, and the politics of representation. This conference seeks to examine:

• Relationship of Human Rights to Migration:
  How do human rights intersect with migration? Has there been a “human right-ization” of migration? What are the implications of this framework in post-humanist and post-migrant societies?
• Border Dynamics and Governance:
  How do border politics manifest in internal, external, and imagined dimensions? What are the implications of regions and localities acting as permanent borders for global powers such as the US and the EU?
• Narratives and Images (and Affects):
  How do narratives, images, and emotional dimensions about migration shape perceptions, policies, and practices? What role do these elements play in the relationship between migration, human rights, and border practices? How do anthropocene-related phenomena affect the crisis of nation-state boundaries?

We welcome submissions addressing (but not limited to) the following themes:

• Theoretical and practical intersections of human rights and migration.
• Border politics and practices in internal and external dimensions.
• The role of visual and textual narratives in shaping migration discourses.
• Posthumanist and post-migrant perspectives on human rights and migration.
• Local and global challenges in migration governance, including the impacts of geopolitical crises.
• The affective and emotional dimensions of migration narratives and border experiences.
• The Migrant Transnationalism as a Border Experience
• The influence of history in the narrative of migrants and post-migrant societies.

Contact for submissions: Cecilia Estrada Villaseñor &  İlke Şanlıer.

4) Inclusive Health and Well-Being

The EUPeace Research Hub Inclusive Health and Well-Being exploits the know-how of the Alliance's partners to implement research in the interdisciplinary field of inclusive health and well-being. The RH aims to develop or improve effective approaches to promote the health of individuals and communities and an equitable distribution of health services along with preventing diseases. Individuals' healthcare requirements vary based on age, gender, life stage, socio-economic status, cultural background and, in some cases, migration experience and status. People affected by poverty, in difficult social conditions or suffering of multiple or chronic conditions may be at higher risk for limited access to appropriate healthcare services. In the era of advanced digitalization, AI (artificial intelligence), genomics, proteomics, and metabolomics offer promising perspectives for advancing inclusive health and well-being for all: the increasing capacity to collect, integrate and interpret large amounts of data through digital technologies can improve disease prevention, diagnosis, treatment, monitoring and surveillance. AI-supported decision-making can enhance patient safety and improve treatment outcomes, while AI-supported translation tools can help to bridge language barriers in clinical practice. However, technical advancements bring ethical and social challenges, e.g. regarding privacy and data security, implicit bias and possibly discriminatory outcomes, misuse and overreliance through diminishing the role of human judgement, accountability, and the ethical use of predictive analytics. The role of AI in supporting the creation of appropriate, accessible, affordable, scalable, sustainable, and person-centred digital technologies to prevent, detect, and respond to health challenges of all kinds needs to be highlighted, to protect individual integrity and deserving public acceptance and trust.

During the meeting, the specific aims of the RH will be addressed along with AI: 

• AI in inclusive health and well-being
• Staying healthy in a rapidly changing society
• Living and working in a health-promoting environment
• Tackling diseases and reducing disease burden
• Ensuring equitable access to innovative, sustainable and high-quality health care
• Developing and using new tools, technologies and digital solutions for improving equitable health services and a healthy society
• Promoting and strengthening an innovative, sustainable and socially accountable EU health industry

Contact for submissions: Lorena Pochini.