The 2025 Annual Conference of the Humanities and Social Sciences at LUMS will focus on Islam and society in historical and contemporary South Asia.

Conference Dates: April 18 - 25, 2025

Deadline for Submission of Abstracts: December 31, 2024

In a spirit of reimagining the past and present, we invite submissions that contribute to a richer understanding of the variety of Islamic traditions and their lived expressions in South Asia, as well as the relationships between Islam and other religious traditions and their followers. Submissions may be historical, ethnographic, or from other disciplinary perspectives in the humanities and social sciences. We are particularly interested in explorations of what it means to construct religious traditions as objects of study.

The study of Islamic traditions represents significant domains of scholarly intervention. Over recent decades, scholars from various disciplines have increasingly come to question orientalist assumptions about the vitality and creativity of religious traditions, often interrogating the usefulness of the category of religion. Research on post-classical Islam has noted significant and subtle ways in which these traditions have changed, creatively responding to developing intellectual, societal, and existential concerns. Such research has also turned to the complex interactions and intersections between different religious traditions in South Asia, across multiple languages and contexts. Finally, scholars have investigated the myriad ways in which premodern traditions interacted with colonial modernity and continue to do so in the post-colonial context. Nonetheless, the extent, significance, and shape of these processes remain up for debate and further inquiry.

At the same time, a growing body of research has also explored the diverse ways of being Muslim found in contemporary South Asia. On the one hand, this has involved moving beyond an assumed dichotomy between Sufism and reformism to trace creative reformulations of Muslim religiosity. On the other hand, it has involved approaches that focus not only on rituals and texts but on what Muslims actually do in their everyday lives, in relation to issues such as gender and class, and to processes of inclusion and exclusion, contestation and coexistence. This includes an examination of their relationships with members of other religions in the varied contexts of the subcontinent.

Aiming to bring these issues together in an interdisciplinary forum, we invite papers in the following areas pertinent to South Asia:

• Historical studies of Islamicate traditions
• Studies of interreligious encounters and interactions in Islamicate South Asia
• Colonial modernity and its impact on religion 
• Social scientific and humanities research on Muslim and non-Muslim communities, culture and arts 
• Theorisations of religious traditions and contestations of the enduring legacies of orientalism, colonialism and eurocentrism in the humanities and social sciences

The conference will take place in-person at LUMS between April 18^th and 20^th 2025 and will include a tour of Lahore. LUMS will provide meals for panelists, and there is a limited budget for accommodation for those coming from outside Lahore. The deadline for the submission of abstracts is December 31, 2024. Responses will be sent out in January.

Researchers interested in participating can submit the title and abstract of their proposed presentation (up to 300 words), along with a brief biography and email address, to hssconf@lums.edu.pk

ORGANIZERS