Open Call - Conference Aesthetics of Protest and Legal Mobilization
Conference
Aesthetics of Protest and Legal Mobilization
Riga, 28–29 May 2026
Organizers: Laine Kristberga (Institute of Literature, Folklore and Art, University of Latvia), Jeff Handmaker (International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam), Michał Stambulski (Erasmus Law School, Erasmus University Rotterdam)
Protests are a crucial site of interaction between citizens, political leaders, social organisations, parties, governments, and law-enforcement agencies. Their unpredictable and performative character makes them incubators of new ways of articulating collective demands and participating in public life. In recent years, protest has become increasingly normalised as a routine form of political expression and a tactic of legal mobilization. This normalisation signals deeper structural problems—above all the inability or unwillingness of political institutions and courts to respond effectively to citizens’ grievances.
The Aesthetics of Protest and Legal Mobilization conference examines the aesthetic, moral, legal, and social dynamics of contemporary protests. A key focus is the aesthetics of protest: the symbols, gestures, images, and performative practices through which civic demands are communicated. Contemporary protest movements generate a global visual imaginary—for example, umbrellas used in both Polish reproductive-rights protests and the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement, or the Jolly Roger pirate-flag symbolism adopted in places as diverse as Madagascar and Mexico. These aesthetic forms travel across borders, becoming instantly recognisable shorthand for dissent and solidarity. The conference also explores how protests create legal opportunities, revealing not momentary disruption but deeper systemic crises of liberal democratic governance and legality. Liberal constitutional orders have struggled to deliver systemic justice or redress structural problems—climate change being a central example, where mitigation and adaptation measures often disproportionately burden poorer communities. At the same time, states and corporations increasingly weaponize law to suppress protest and dissent.
The event is organised in dialogue with the Riga Performance Festival Starptelpa and its 2026 theme, Sonic Vibrations, which investigates performance as a mode of communication, transmission, and embodied agency. These concerns resonate with the conference’s focus on protest aesthetics, legal mobilization, and the performative dimensions of civic action.
We invite contributions that engage with, among others, the following questions:
1. How do contemporary protest movements reshape the boundaries of legal and political participation?
2. What forms of legal mobilization emerge from protest cultures, and how do they influence legal imagination?
3. How do digital infrastructures, platforms, and data practices transform the organization and visibility of protests?
4. In what ways do aesthetic or performative practices within protests contribute to civic agency and the articulation of social demands?
5. What are the possibilities for legal learning in the midst of multi-layered struggles for social justice where protest has served as a key tactic of legal mobilization?
Submissions with a short abstract (up to 400 words) should be sent by January 30, 2026 to laine.kristberga@lulfmi.lv
