We are delighted to invite you to the 19th EISA Pan-European Conference on International Relations (PEC), to be held at Iscte – University Institute of Lisbon, 1-4 September 2026. 

In 2026, our flagship event will take place in Portugal, at the crossroads of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, offering a unique vantage point for exploring contemporary international relations. Following the remarkable success of PEC 2025 in Bologna, we will gather in Lisbon’s inspiring scholarly environment at the ISCTE-University Institute of Lisbon.

As per our tradition, PEC 2026 will be organized in thematic sections, both standing and new ones, and will welcome colleagues from a diversity of disciplines relating to international studies, from Europe and beyond. Plenary sessions will highlight key issues in current debates in international relations, with leading experts from our association. We will also offer opportunities through our Early Career Development Group events, social events, and professional development activities to nurture our community.

The EISA’s Mobility Fund has been increased over the years, and we will continue providing support for those in financial need to attend, ensuring our conference remains more inclusive and accessible. We are committed to making the 19th edition of our conference as welcoming and rewarding as possible, where ideas can be formulated, debated, criticized, shaped and sharpened through mutual respect and understanding.

It is this spirit which has made EISA’s Pan-European Conferences the leading annual event in International Relations in Europe, and we are looking forward to continuing this tradition Portugal’s vibrant capital!

Even better than the real thing?  Questioning knowledge production, positionality, and authenticity in IR 

As scholars whose job is to produce texts and teach about them, we often serve as arbiters of what counts as knowledge in International Relations. Our field, long shaped by Western and state-centric assumptions of objectivity, neutrality, and universality, faces questions about the authenticity and legitimacy of its epistemological claims. Over the last few decades, IR has become receptive to a more nuanced and complex understanding of world politics, as well as a wider diversity of ontological, epistemological, theoretical and methodological approaches. Claims of value-free knowledge and universality have also been challenged. The acceptance of the importance of the gaze, of positionality and of reflexivity came with their own challenges: what is knowledge, who is in a position of producing it, and how should it circulate? 

At a time when global politics is marked by disinformation, epistemic inequality, and the erosion of shared truths, the foundations of how we know the world – and who is authorized to speak about it – are under ever-growing scrutiny. IR, as all other fields of knowledge, has more recently been confronted with the challenge of the impact of genAI in knowledge production. Both scholars and the general public have come to question what is real (?) knowledge produced by humans and or whether it is the appropriated output produced by stochastic parrots. Even though many argue that genAI can be useful, there are significant ethical and epistemological concerns and questions that remain. What have peers produced, and with how much genAI, and what have students produced, and with how much genAI? To put it bluntly, if the subaltern have to free their minds from the gaze of the colonizer or the former colonizer, what can one say about the gaze of genAI?  

This conference invites reflections on how knowledge in IR is produced, circulated, and contested. It encourages participants to interrogate the politics of authenticity: Whose experiences and epistemologies are deemed valid, and whose are dismissed or rendered invisible? What role do institutions, technologies, and disciplinary norms play in shaping what we take to be true, knowable, or worth knowing?  

We welcome contributions on the impact of world and regional events on knowledge production. In this sense, the debate on knowledge production and its authenticity in a world in which truth claims are constantly questioned from all sides and in which artificial intelligence is certain to play an increasingly central role is an important one in the current academic context. How are scholars dealing with evidence, with data and how is that impacting their research? We also welcome contributions about what is authentic knowledge, who authorizes it, who is entitled to produce it and how it is produced. What is the role of academia in the new ventures of knowledge production, and how can it -or should it- collaborate with other sectors in producing knowledge? How is knowledge transferred, how are the future generations of knowledge producers prepared and made ready to deal with these challenges and those future challenges that we do not yet know about?