Place & Power: BC Studies Conference 2025

The biennial, international, and multi-disciplinary BC Studies Conference will be held from 2-4 May 2025 on the unceded ancestral territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) People at the campus of UBC-Vancouver. As conference organizers, we humbly recognize xʷməθkʷəy̓əm rights, title, and jurisdiction over their territory on which we work as uninvited guests.

The program includes panels, roundtables, and individual papers that address the theme of “Place and Power” in British Columbia’s past, present, and future in any manner that deepens collective understanding of this place currently called “British Columbia.” We have extended particular invitation to approaches that speak to pressing issues of our time, from the rights of Indigenous Peoples to climate justice and beyond. Researchers from all disciplines are welcome including those in the arts and humanities, social sciences, law, education, policy, planning, and environmental sciences. Research about teaching and learning, collaborative research methods, and the digital humanities in BC are all welcome.

We especially welcome Indigenous scholars and researchers, as well as graduate students; museum, library, and/or archives professionals; public scholars; artists; and/or community-based scholars.

This year’s conference theme, “Place and Power,” highlights two concepts that are inextricably interconnected in British Columbia. Specifically, the theme was inspired by a new BA requirement in the Faculty of Arts at UBC-Vancouver, which engages BA students with the history and present of xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) People, with settler colonialism in BC, and with the systems of power, inequality, community, and diversity that make this place. This curricular innovation is among a range of changes in pedagogy and public discourse across the province that flow from and intersect with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s Calls to Action which are now a decade old.