15 October 2025

Call for Papers

Edited Volume: Activism in Exile - Reimagining Agency and Protection in an Era of Crisis

This edited volume has two motivations. First, a growing awareness that multiple contemporary crises — populism, conflicts, shrinking civic space, climate change, austerity — are combining to push more and more human rights defenders and activists into exile. Second, the volume emerges from a specific research project. The project is a collaboration between the Centre for Reconciliation Studies, University of Bonn (Germany), and the UNESCO Chair, Protection of Human Rights Defenders and Expansion of Political Space at the Centre for Applied Human Rights, University of York (UK), funded by the Gerda Henkel Foundation, and titled Activists in Exile in an Era of Mass Displacement: Universities as Sites of Protection and Supporters of Agency for Activists from Russia and Myanmar. The research has a particular focus on Russian activists in exile in the Czech Republic and Myanmar activists in exile in Thailand.

This edited volume seeks to address a gap in academic literature on activism in exile and protection infrastructures in the contemporary polarised political context. The focus is not exclusively on universities as sites of agency and protection, but we welcome contributions on universities. We invite contributions that examine the agency of activists in exile, the architectures of protection that shape their possibilities, and the evolving and different roles and different modalities of intervention of universities in these dynamics. Contributions on any countries, regions or cases are welcome.