Breaking Barriers : Reimagining Centre - Margin Dynamics from Interdisciplinary Perspectives

Breaking Barriers : Reimagining Centre – Margin Dynamics from Interdisciplinary Perspectives is an international academic conference that invites critical reflection on the enduring binaries of centre and margin in our contemporary world. The conference seeks to interrogate how entrenched hierarchies of power continue to influence structures of governance, identity, knowledge, and belonging. As global socio-political shifts expose the fractures of centralized authority, from geopolitical crises and algorithmic surveillance to gender-based violence and climate collapse, this conference asserts the urgency of thinking from and with the margins.

The conceptual framework of the conference positions the ‘Centre’ as the dominant site of normativity, control, and epistemic privilege, often embodied by institutions such as the state, media, capital, and academia. In contrast, the ‘margin’ refers to communities, identities, and knowledge systems historically relegated to the periphery. These margins may be geographically remote, socioeconomically disenfranchised, linguistically marginalized, or epistemically erased. Yet, they are also generative spaces where new vocabularies of resistance, creativity, and justice are emerging.

Noteworthily, linguistic hierarchies also serve as a powerful reflection of broader social stratifications. Dominant languages and standardized dialects often occupy the ‘centre,’ while minority languages and non-standard varieties are pushed to the periphery. From colonial legacies and assimilationist policies to digital exclusion in Natural Language Processing models, language functions not merely as communication but as a site of power, erasure, and struggle. This conference invites critical engagement with how language in its variation, representation, and regulation, becomes a medium through which power is both encoded and resisted.

Drawing from the insights of theorists like Achille Mbembe, Boaventura de Sousa Santos, and Kimberlé Crenshaw, the conference emphasizes the need to bridge scholarly inquiry with grassroots praxis. It centres intersectional, decolonial, and transnational perspectives to explore how power now travels through capital, code, and culture, no longer confined by territory alone. The conference welcomes contributions that challenge the centrality of dominant institutions and foreground the subversive potential of margins to disrupt, resist, and reimagine global futures.