Where do we stand? On positionality in academic research.

14 October, 11 November, 9 December 2026, 10 February, 10 March, 14 April 2027.

The ASCA Theory Seminar is open to all PhD candidates and ASCA staff members. Please register with Eloe at asca-fgw@uva.nl

This year’s ASCA Theory Seminar takes standpoint theory (Sandra Harding, Patricia Hill Collins, and others) as a starting point to question how our social positions, experiences, values, and institutional locations shape the knowledge we produce as researchers. Rather than treating research as conducted from an “objective” or detached position, we will examine how our relation to objects of study affects what we notice, ask, interpret, and omit. Each session will feature an ASCA member who will select the secondary literature and a text of their own. The sessions will be presented and moderated by a group of seminar participants, not the invited ASCA member. Through the secondary literature and the presentation of the participants (who may include their own research projects), the seminar invites critical reflection on situated knowledge, reflexivity, power, and responsibility in academic research. The introductory session takes place on 14 October. Nawal Mustafa will be the featured ASCA member on 11 November, and Jeroen de Kloet on 9 December. 

The aim of the Theory Seminar is twofold: First, we propose to explore broad theoretical and methodological paradigms, and discuss influential texts in relation to ASCA PhD projects. Participants of the Theory Seminar will become acquainted with current practices in cultural analysis and learn how to integrate them in their own work.

The second important aim of the Theory Seminar is community building. The seminar aims to bring together PhD candidates from the diverse disciplines within ASCA to learn about each other’s research projects, struggles and joys, and to make new friends. To serve this latter purpose, each session will end in a café with drinks.