Call for Applications
Colloquium: Nature and Territory
DEADLINE: February 5th
Proposals should be sent by February 5th to the following mail addresses :
top.aycanur@gmail.com and elena.astafieva@ifea-istanbul.net. Applicants will be notified of the outcome after the review process 20 February 2026.
The language of the colloquium and the following event is English.
From epistemological reflection to methodological approach
Exchange of contributions and introduction to GIS
Istanbul, 21-22 May 2026
Ayçanur TOP (PhD student, Galatasaray University), Charles GRZYBOWSKI (APD, CETOBaC, Ehess), Julie Alev DILMAÇ (GSÜ), Elena ASTAFIEVA (CNRS – IFEA)
In the social sciences, the notions of nature and territory maintain a close yet fundamentally ambivalent relationship. Nature has traditionally been conceived as a pre-existing entity, external to human societies and their institutions, whereas territory is understood as a spatial construct shaped by processes of appropriation, control, governance, and power. This distinction, largely inherited from modern epistemological frameworks, continues to structure ways of thinking about space, the environment, and relations between humans and nonhumans.
This EURETES cycle proposes to put this dichotomy to the test by exploring zones of thresholds, friction, and intermediation where nature and territory are co-produced. Drawing on interdisciplinary perspectives, the aim is to interrogate the epistemological frameworks, political dispositifs, and methodological tools through which these categories are constructed, negotiated, and contested. The first day, dedicated to sharing participants’ contributions, is therefore linked to an introduction to cartographic methodological tools (GIS).
The cycle thus invites participants to rethink the boundaries between nature and territory not as fixed lines, but as relational spaces traversed by multiple forms of knowledge, situated practices, and heterogeneous power relations.
Day 1
This first day takes the form of an interdisciplinary conference bringing together researchers, doctoral students, and early-career scholars in the social sciences and humanities. It is structured around three complementary thematic axes.
Axis 1 – Epistemologies: thresholds, representations, and critiques
This axis seeks to examine the epistemological thresholds through which nature and territory are conceived, represented, and governed. By focusing on the liminal and interstitial spaces of knowledge production, it aims to question persistent binary frameworks such as nature/culture, local/global, and material/symbolic, which continue to shape the social sciences.
Contributions may analyze how epistemic practices do not merely describe territories, but actively participate in their material and symbolic constitution, by defining what becomes thinkable, visible, and governable. Particular attention will be given to alternative forms of
knowledge and experience, such as indigenous, affective, embodied, and relational knowledges, capable of unsettling dominant paradigms of representation, control, and spatial imagination.

The articles forming 