CFP: Land, Territory, and Justice (MANCEPT Workshop 2026)

Convenors:

Kaitie Jourdeuil (Queen’s University, Canada)
Michael Luoma (University of Northern British Columbia, Canada)

Land, Territory, and Justice

2026 MANCEPT Workshops in Political Theory, 2-4 September 2026 

There is now a rich debate within and across diverse traditions of political and moral thought about the meaning, use, and desirability of the concepts of land and territory, and their relation to justice. These debates extend beyond analytical moral and political philosophy and include vital perspectives within Indigenous political theory, eco-phenomenology, critical theory, and dialogical traditions. The goal of this workshop is to bring together researchers working in these diverse traditions to discuss both established questions concerning the relations between land, territory, and justice, and new questions arising from dialogue across these traditions.

For example, the past fifteen years have been marked by an uptick in dedicated theorizing about territorial rights in contemporary Anglo-American moral and political philosophy (see for example: Miller, 2012; Moore, 2014, 2015, 2019; Nine, 2012, 2022; Ochoa-Espejo, 2020; Simmons, 2016; Stilz, 2019). While the first wave of this literature focused on core conceptual questions about the nature and scope of various territorial rights (including jurisdiction, self-determination, resource control, and immigration), the kinds of agents who hold these rights, and the normative justifications for them, this literature has now self-reflexively entered a “second wave” characterised by a deeper concern for questions of global inequality, decolonization, overlapping projects of self-determination, and the environmental crisis (Moore & Ugalde, 2025). For example, recent inquiries have asked (but not fully answered) questions such as: What is the extent of morally mandatory restitution in cases of territorial wrongdoing, including settler colonialism (Luoma, 2023; Luoma and Moore, 2024; Moore, 2019; Stilz, 2024; Riebold, 2022, 2023)? How may multiple peoples, with distinct normative and ontological systems, overlap in the same place without retrenching relationships of structural injustice and inter-group domination (Jourdeuil 2024, 2025a, 2025b; Luoma, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025)? What forms of governance are required in ecologically integrated regions spanning borders (Nine, 2022)? How are territorial rights contingent on respect for biodiversity and ecological integrity (Moore, 2023; Kwan, 2025)? And how can the benefits and burdens of natural resources, energy transition, and climate change mitigation/adaptation be fairly distributed between groups (Armstrong, 2017; De Biaso 2024a, 2024b; Li, 2022; Moore, 2019)?

Concurrently to these discourses, Indigenous scholars, environmental philosophers, and eco-phenomenologists interrogate the core normative, ontological, and epistemological assumptions of these discourses. Indigenous theorists challenge the hegemony of rights-based territorial frameworks, contending that the natural world is not a stockpile of “resources” to be distributed and controlled according to a theory of justice, but is better conceived of as a kinship network populated by beings deserving of intrinsic concern and respect with whom we must live harmoniously (e.g., Allard-Tremblay 2023, 2025; Burkhart, 2019; Mills 2017, 2018, 2019; Simpson 2011, 2017; Temin 2023). Eco-phenomenologists challenge conceptions of land as a neutral background container against which we exercise our agency, demonstrating how land and place structure our lived experience and subjectivity, our ethical encounter with the alterity of the other-than-human, and the possibilities for political agency (Casey, 1993, 2018; Ingold, 2010; Malpas, 1998; Rose, 2005; Seamon, 2018; Smith, 2001, 2011; Toadvine, 2019). Beyond political theory, land and territory are at the heart of intensifying international political conflicts, including attempted territorial annexations, rising majority and minority nationalism, struggles against (neo-)colonialism, and the global climate and environmental crises.

Consequently, this workshop welcomes submissions that investigate conceptual, ontological, normative, methodological, and/or applied questions at the intersection of land, territory, and justice. We invite paper submissions from diverse methodological perspectives (including, but not limited to analytical, moral and political philosophy, environmental philosophy and eco-phenomenology, Indigenous political thought, critical theory, and comparative dialogue) from researchers at all stages of their career. Works in progress are encouraged. Workshop sessions will be pre-read, with a brief presentation (10 min. max.) from the author, followed by a 40-minute Q&A.

Submission Guidelines:

Abstracts should be anonymised and must not exceed 500 words (including references). Please include your name, affiliation, and contact details in the email submission. Abstracts should be submitted by email to both convenors ([email protected] and [email protected]) by May 2nd. Selected participants will be notified by May 26th. Participants will be expected to circulate their papers by August 16th. Please do not hesitate the contact the convenors with any questions.

About MANCEPT:

The MANCEPT Workshops is an annual conference in political theory, organised under the auspices of the Manchester Centre for Political Theory. The conference is run fully-in person at the University of Manchester. Bursaries are available to speakers based on need. Further instructions on registration and bursary applications will be released in due course.