ISOIS 2026: Call for Papers

Call for Papers [PDF-Download]

Concept Note:

Indian knowledge traditions have long imagined land, water, and life-worlds as sacred, relational, and more-than-human, weaving together rituals, narratives, cosmologies, and practices of care that exceed modern disciplinary boundaries. Island spaces—whether riverine sandbars, coastal archipelagos, sacred groves on hill-islands, or temple-tanks experienced as spiritual islands—offer particularly rich terrains for exploring embodied ecologies, ritualised forms of dwelling, and ecological memory.

At a time when rising seas, climate displacement, and extractive tourism threaten fragile coastal and island ecologies, a re-reading of Indian epistemologies—Śaiva, Vaiṣṇava, Buddhist, indigenous, folk and regional traditions—can illuminate alternative modes of inhabiting and narrating island spaces. From temple tanks and sacred groves to coastal pilgrimage circuits and maritime mythologies, these landscapes stage complex negotiations between sacrality, ecology, and community stewardship, offering historical precedents for contemporary debates on sustainability, resilience, and environmental justice.

This EFSLE International Seminar (ISOIS 2026) aims to foreground “embodied ecologies” not merely as metaphor but as lived practice: the sensorial, corporeal and ritual engagements through which communities remember and sustain island environments. It also invites critical attention to “sacred landscapes” as dynamic, contested spaces where indigenous ontologies, state conservation regimes, blue economy projects, and hydrocolonial histories intersect. Reading island spaces through Indian knowledge traditions allows us to ask how story, song, pilgrimage, local taboo, and everyday labour inscribe ecological ethics into bodies and environments, and how these inscriptions travel across Oceans, Diasporas and Transregional networks.

Being a multidisciplinary and an interdisciplinary conference, original research papers from all the streams are most welcome to discuss such grave issues largely related, but not exclusively limited, to the following sub-themes:

Sub-themes:

1. Island imaginaries in Indian epics, purāṇas and regional oral traditions.
2. Sacred groves, hill-temples and river-islands as ecocritical case studies in India.
3. Blue humanities approaches to Indian Ocean island literatures and visual cultures.
4. Hydrocolonial histories, port cities and archipelagic memory in South Asian writing.
5. Indigenous eco-cosmologies and sacred islanded spaces (forests, caves, waterfalls).
6. Temple tanks, stepwells and water-bodies as ritual islands and ecological infrastructures.
7. Pilgrimage circuits, coastal monasteries and shrine networks as sacred seascapes.
8. Indian philosophical concepts (prakṛti, panchabhūta, ṛta, dharma) and ecological ethics on islands.
9. Climate change, rising seas, and narratives of displacement in Indian and Indian Ocean fiction.
10. Gendered, Dalit, and indigenous embodiments of island labour, fisheries and coastal resilience.
11. Environmental jurisprudence, rights of nature, and sacred landscapes in Indian and Latin American dialogues.
12. Comparative studies of Andaman–Nicobar, Lakshadweep, and other island regions as sacred ecologies.
13. Oceanic pedagogy, ecospiritual movements, and community-based conservation in island contexts.
14. Visual, performative and digital arts engaging sacred island landscapes and ecological memory.
15. Methodological reflections on archipelagic thinking, geophilosophy and decolonial ecologies in Indian contexts.

Important Dates:

• Registration Starts on: 01 July 2026
• Deadline for Submission of Abstracts: 15 August 2026
• Intimation of Acceptance: within 15 days after receiving the Abstract
• (If selected, the participants may proceed with registration afterwards)
• Final Paper Submission (first draft): 15 November 2026

Notes:

• Abstract of 300 words with 5 keywords must be mailed to- md@efsle.org
• Mention “ISOIS 2026” or “Mayabunder Seminar” in the subject line.
• Please use 12 point Times New Roman and avoid footnotes.
• The full paper must be within 6000-10000 words (excluding all the references and the abstract). Use the latest MLA style of referencing.
• Selected Papers will be published in an edited volume with ISBN no. (Not in the form of conference proceedings, instead a complete edited book- The proposed publisher will be Bloomsbury.
• The papers selected after the initial review of first drafts will be considered for publication. Authors will be notified via email after the conference regarding the submission of revised or edited versions, if required, as the volume is intended as a post-conference publication.
• Authors are requested to attach their bio-note (in third person, not exceeding 100 words) separately.