Main Plenary
Producing knowledge about international relations
Date: 1 September
Time: 16.15-17:45
Room: Grande Auditorio
Building: 2
Participants
Description
International Relations is not merely a field that studies global politics; it is also a field that actively produces and legitimizes particular forms of knowledge about the world.
Yet, the authority of academic expertise, the status of evidence, and the boundaries between knowledge and opinion are increasingly contested. At a time marked by geopolitical upheaval, disinformation, epistemic fragmentation, and growing scepticism toward institutions, questions about how knowledge is produced and validated have acquired renewed urgency.
The objective of the plenary is to simultaneously engage with and reflect on the evolution of knowledge production in the field of international relations.
In this plenary, we invite the speakers to reflect on the epistemological and ontological diversity and richness of the field and indicate the new directions the study of international relations has adopted over the last two decades.
The plenary aims at going beyond the celebration of the pluriverse in which we live and ponder about the challenges, often violent, this diversity encounters and the risks it entails.
Semi-Plenary 1
Positionality and authenticity in IR
Date: 3 September
Time: 18:00-19:30
Room: Auditorio B1.03
Building: 2
Participants
Description
Over the past decades, scholars of International Relations have increasingly recognized that knowledge is shaped by the social, political, and historical locations from which it is produced.
Concepts such as positionality, reflexivity, and situated knowledge have challenged claims of neutrality and universality, drawing attention to the power relations embedded in academic inquiry.
Yet these developments raise new questions about authenticity, representation, and authority.
This semi plenary brings two key challenges in social sciences in general, and in IR in particular: the importance of positionality, of agency and of authorship, and the authenticity of the knowledge produced, the latter being a central theme of the conference.
In times of affirmation of the legitimacy of different ways of knowing and debates on mimicking and universality of knowledge, but also in times of generative artificial intelligence, the duality of positionality and authenticity is dealt with from different perspectives by the contributors of this semi-plenary.
Semi-Plenary 2
Technologies of Knowledge
Date: 3 September
Time: 18:00-19:30
Room: Auditorio B1.04
Building: 2
Participants
Description
Technologies have always shaped how knowledge is produced, stored, circulated, and evaluated.
Today, however, the rapid expansion of digital infrastructures and generative artificial intelligence is transforming academic work in unprecedented ways. From data collection and analysis to writing, reviewing, teaching, and publishing, new technologies are redefining both the practices and politics of knowledge production.
Beyond questions of efficiency and innovation, the session also addresses broader epistemological and ethical concerns. Whose knowledge is embedded in technological systems? How do digital platforms reproduce or challenge existing inequalities in global knowledge production? What forms of bias, exclusion, or epistemic dependence emerge when academic work relies on technologies developed within specific political, linguistic, and economic contexts?
The semi-plenary focuses and problematizes the centrality of the dichotomy between technology and knowledge. Contributors to this semi-plenary will discuss the place of technology in knowledge production while problematizing it, as some will also focus on the negative sides of technologies in the contemporary world.
Contributors will also discuss a diverse range of technologies that are (ab)used in producing knowledge.