Call For Proposals

In this time of overlapping crises throughout the world — climate, environmental, social, epistemological, political, and values challenges — reimagining our ways of producing knowledge and connecting becomes urgent.

The theme for the 2026 Action Research Network of the Americas Hybrid Conference, Dissolving barriers: Weaving knowledge in the territories of the Americas . . . And Beyond represents an invitation for such reflection.

Dissolving barriers is considered in the conference theme as recognizing that knowledge is not confined to the university but rather also emerges in communities; within social struggles, care practices; urban and rural peripheries and also in the multiplicity of indigenous culture, immigrant knowledge, decolonialism and post colonialism and beyond.

The conference focus through the field of action research deconstructs the rigid boundaries between academic and popular knowledge; between the north and south of the Americas, and traveling past these geographical limits; eliminating obstacles between the knowledge of research studies and life lessons and between theory and practice.

Instead, in this meeting, we seek to strengthen the threads of action research that can connect diverse territories and strengthen historically silenced and/or marginalized voices within the Americas – and beyond, within the richness of the plurality of languages, histories, and struggles in order to offer a fertile field for interweaving experiences of resistance, care, and collective invention and investigation.

For this conference, the action research methodologies that emerge from the work of Fals Borda, from the soil of life and struggle stand out:—such as the systematization of experiences; teacher/practitioner self study; militant investigation; citizen research; popular science studies; decolonial, countercolonial, situated activist research; and exploration of the pedagogy of cooperation—all these strands propose not only understanding the individual and collective world, but transforming it. These are inclusive of action practices that dissolve boundaries between researcher and community, between science and experience, between theory and practice. They produce knowledge - while also producing bonds of belonging, and individual and social transformation.

Together, in the 2026 ARNA Hybrid Conference we will weave together a living network, made of listening, affection, care and action: an action network that is sustained by the commitment to social and environmental justice, to the sovereignty of peoples and to the right to transformative research.

This conference is, therefore, a celebration of new encounters, of individual and plural knowledge and of futures that are built at the conference –through shared knowledge and experiences based on the represented geographical and abstract territory of others.

We come together not to just present, but also to act and learn and to feel and think together about mutual territory based on co-existence and re-existence - with affection.

This is a space to celebrate knowledge in movement and futures that can be woven - where we have the courage to build knowledge and new worlds by coming together and dissolving barriers.

GENERAL PROPOSAL SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

All proposals will be from 300 to a maximum of 500 words and should describe the overall aims/objectives of the session.

• In your proposal submission please specify if you would prefer to share your paper in a round table paper, individual presentation, panel, or workshop (all described above).

• We will take what you would prefer into consideration during our review of the
proposals for placement in a session within the conference schedule.

• Submissions may be proposed independently or as a group. If the submission is a proposal from a group, then a contact member of the group needs to be identified for conference communication.

• If you are submitting a Panel proposal or an Artistic Experience proposal, please be sure to read the information above.

• Proposals and sessions will be presented in English and/or Spanish and/or Portuguese.

• A proposal organizer who is submitting but not presenting may act as chair and/or discussant.

SPECIFICS ABOUT PROPOSAL FORMATS

Paper Proposals will follow this general format:

• Briefly outline the research and/or participatory action aims of your work and for the conference presentation;

• Explain what has been done so far to

1. achieve the aims of the participatory action and/or research (e.g.,
methodology, theoretical framework, methods, and how you included or will
include dissolving barriers)

2. define the progress made (or goals you have set) towards research and action aims (e.g., findings, results, outputs, program changes, community action changes, dissolving barriers centered events, or perspective changes).

Paper Proposals will follow this general format:

• First, describe research completed, research in progress and/or more general thematic discussions of work in one particular area or several, such as discussions of organizing community based participatory based research studies to dissolve barriers, publicizing community based participatory research using barriers dissolving approaches, sustaining community based participatory research through the dedication of dissolving barriers.

• The proposal can them move on to discuss how the panel will be structured, identify any target participant group, and describe how the audience will be included for questions.

• As noted, each paper presentation in the Panel proposal will have a description of 100 words or less.

Workshop Proposals should describe the overall aims/objectives of the workshop; the structure of the workshop (including a general flow of activities); workshop capacity and the target participant group (ex. Community Based Organizations, New or Emerging Community Based Participatory Action Researchers, or Youth Participatory Action Researchers) - if the workshop is not targeting a general audience of action-researchers.

Artistic Experience Proposals will follow the information provided above about this type of proposal. Please know that we invite creativity in proposing an Artistic Experience!