Council for Ethnic Participation (CEP) Pre-Conference

CEP Pre-Conference Call For Proposals & Volunteers

Proposals and Volunteer Interest Forms due Thursday, April 30, 2026 at 3:00pm Pacific Time

Review the Call For Proposals Learn more about Volunteering 

(Re)membering a Place Called Home: Ontoepistemic Commitments Towards Liberation

The purpose of CEP, as stated in our by-laws, is to facilitate the participation of scholars from ethnically and racially minoritized communities in the affairs of the Association. 

The theme of CEP’s Pre-Conference is “(Re)membering a Place Called Home: Ontoepistemic Commitments Towards Liberation.” Historically, CEP has been deliberately a counterspace, third space, a mundo zurdo, to think, consider, and prioritize ontologies and epistemologies that disrupt westernized ways of knowledge production. A place of “rooting one’s truth as a site of knowledge production and understanding that allows the interrogation of self, society, systems, and process” (González et al., 2023, p. 4). Through our contributions within and beyond the academy, we have collectively created impactful and culturally sustaining approaches to address the harm and needs of our communities.

In relation to the broader conference theme, the CEP Pre-Conference seeks to create an intentional space to (re)member who we are as minoritized scholars, educators, and peoples. Grounded in decolonial, Indigenous, and feminist traditions, this pre-conference centers vulnerability, embodiment, and language as interconnected practices of resistance and collective power that oppose coloniality. As Anzaldúa (2015) reminds us, visible and public acts of vulnerability, though risky, can become sources of transformative power when mobilized in community.

Knowledge here is understood as situated, felt, and co-created rather than neutral or detached. Feliciano-Santos’s (2017) insights on Taíno linguistic practices informs how the CEP Pre-Conference will attend to language as a site of refusal. How we speak, write, and name ourselves in academic spaces matters, not only as a method, but as an assertion of presence against colonial erasure. Because we have been here before, this call is not new. It is in relationship with the past, grounded in the histories, struggles, and knowledges that continue to shape our present. We invite participants to revisit the Borikén Syllabus (https://www.ashe.ws/boriken-syllabus) as part of this ongoing conversation. Together with these frameworks, we invite engagement with research and scholarship as embodied, linguistic, and political acts. Through dialogue and collective reflection, the CEP Pre-Conference seeks to nurture solidarity in Borikén, reclaiming research and scholarship as sites of healing, accountability, and transformative change.

Part 1: Virtual Pre-Conference Colloquium on Friday, October 23

Considering the Pre-Con theme and role of ‘home,’ the Virtual Pre-Conference Colloquium is designed as a relational space for scholars to center critical self-interrogation and communal accountability. Rather than positioning Puerto Rico as a site to be consumed, studied, or experienced, this colloquium invites participants to examine how colonial histories, desires, and academic formations shape how we arrive, move, listen, and engage. The colloquium focuses on interrogating the colonial self, how power, longing, entitlement, and curiosity are produced through empire and reproduced through scholarly travel, research, and conferencing. Participants will be invited to reflect on their positionalities, the languages they carry, and the relational responsibilities that precede physical arrival.

This colloquium prioritizes relational practices over content accumulation, emphasizing slow preparation, ethical presence, and collective accountability. In this space, we will together consider the following questions:

• Who are you beyond academia? How do you (re)member who you are?

• What does it mean to arrive responsibly?

• How do we practice refusal, humility, and care in spaces shaped by ongoing colonial conditions? And how might preparation itself become a decolonial practice?

• What are your commitments towards liberation in praxis?

We also invite colleagues to help us shape this year's virtual Pre-Conference colloquium. Please contact us directly via email to share your interest.

Part 2: In-Person Pre-Conference Forum on Tuesday, November 3 in San Juan, Puerto Rico

Building from the virtual colloquium’s focus on relational preparation and interrogation of the colonial self, the in-person Pre-Conference Forum in San Juan is designed as a space for situated, accountable, and embodied engagement. This forum invites participants to move beyond arrival as consumption and toward presence as relational responsibility. Rather than centering mastery of place or extractive knowledge production, the in-person gathering emphasizes being in relation to land, language, history, and community under conditions of ongoing coloniality. Participants are encouraged to consider how scholarly practices shift when accountability is no longer abstract but embodied, spatial, and relational.

Our time together in-person should foreground collective meaning-making, ethical witnessing, and methodological experimentation that honors Puerto Rico not as backdrop, but as a living site shaped by resistance and struggle. Sessions should reflect careful attention to relationality, positionality, power, and desire, and demonstrate how research, pedagogy, and creative work can be reoriented toward liberation.

With these intentions in mind, we invite scholars to submit proposals, research papers; scholarly papers; works in progress; performance, visual, and digital scholarship; and interactive symposia that reflects your connection and dedication to home.

As you develop your proposals, we ask you to consider the following:     

• Where and who do you inherit and draw knowledge from?

• How has homespace shaped your ontoepistemic orientations?

• How does your research and scholarship nurture yourself and community? 

• How do you embody and practice joy through theory, through methodology, and through scholarship? 

• How does your community or communities guide the direction and development of your research and scholarship? 

• In what ways have you intentionally moved away from the demands and expectations of the academy moving outside the established theoretical frameworks and coloring new lines of thinking, writing, and more? 

• What are your commitments towards liberation in praxis?

 The CEP Pre-Conference peer-review process reflects high expectations of rigor and quality, where rigor is not measured by distance or detachment, but by the depth of our accountability to communities, histories, and the knowledge we steward. We welcome proposals that engage in critical analyses of hegemonic whiteness and white supremacy, racial capitalism, settler colonialism, ethnocentrism, and cis-heteropatriarchy through systemic and structural lenses. Proposals that confront racism’s entanglement with other interlocking structures of marginalization and privilege (e.g., social class, ability, sex assigned at birth, gender identity and expression, sexuality, religion/spirituality/faith, and global/transnational) are also  encouraged. 

In alignment with our Pre-Conference theme, we will also prioritize place based scholarship that explores and honors our relational responsibility to Puerto Rico and the Caribbean.

Call For Volunteers

We know the quality and success of the conference is contingent upon the collective engagement of each and every member serving as Reviewers, Chairs, and Discussants. Service in these roles helps to ensure the integrity of our conference and, subsequently, the field of higher education scholarship. However, we also know that the rapidly changing landscape of higher education and the challenges we are facing more broadly in society, and within our communities are taking a toll on our members. Please know that we value you and the time and energy you give to ensuring our conference programming can meet the moment.

Learn more about Volunteering

Tentative Schedule

Friday, October 22, 2026 (Virtual via Zoom)

Tuesday, November 3, 2026 (In-Person in San Juan)

Registration Rates

Registration will open in April 2026

Virtual Pre-Conference Colloquium & In-Person Pre-Conference Forum

Virtual Pre-Conference Colloquium ONLY