CALL FOR PAPERS for the Workshop: Mapping Actors and Transnational Networks in Anti-Gender Mobilizations

CALL FOR PAPERS

MAPPING ACTORS AND TRANSNATIONAL NETWORKS IN ANTI-GENDER MOBILIZATIONS

Workshop | University of Helsinki | 28–29 May 2026
Organisers: Susana Galán, Šárka Kolmašová, Marianna Muravyeva, Didem Unal Abaday
Funded by COST Action CA23149
Outcome: Special issue
Deadline for abstracts: 15 January 2026

We invite scholars to participate in a workshop designed to prepare a special issue on actors and transnational networks in anti-gender mobilisations. To ensure a high-quality collective output and an in-depth discussion environment, selected participants will be required to submit a full draft of their article two weeks before the
workshop. The workshop will centre on close reading and constructive feedback on these drafts.

Over the past decade, anti-gender politics has become one of the most powerful and interconnected formations of reactionary mobilization. This workshop focuses specifically on its manifestations in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and Southwest Asia and North Africa (SWANA)/Near and Middle East (NME), where anti-gender actors operate through dense networks that link domestic power structures with regional and transnational infrastructures. This workshop takes anti-gender politics as a field of constellations—relational configurations of actors whose connectivity and positionality jointly determine the strength, reach, and effects of their mobilization.
Connectivity refers to the transnational, regional, or local networks through which actors exchange resources, strategies, and discourses. Positionality captures their location within domestic hierarchies of power, forms of capital (political, moral, communicative, epistemic) they mobilize, and how this enables or constrains their influence.

Taken as a framework, constellations allow us to map how actors are linked and, even more importantly, to analyze what these links enable. They help us trace how anti-gender mobilizations produce discursive shifts (e.g. normalization of moral panic framings), Policy adjustments (e.g. curriculum reform, funding reallocations), legislative change (e.g. constitutional amendments, restrictions on exual and reproductive rights), and behavioral effects (e.g. altered practices in schools, municipalities, universities, or courts). In this sense, the workshop foregrounds effects as the analytical end point. Contributions should move beyond identifying or classifying actors to examining how constellations translate into concrete transformations within political, legal, or cultural fields.

The workshop invites contributions that apply this framework by analyzing either connectivity or positionality, or their interaction, as explanatory vectors of successful anti-gender campaigns. Authors are encouraged to explore one of the following research questions:

- How do actors embedded in transnational or regional networks coordinate/exchange/sustain anti-gender politics, and how do These connections shape the effects (discursive, legislative etc.) of the campaigns?

- How do actors leverage their political, moral, communicative, or epistemic capital and which forms of authority (state, religious, media, academic, etc.) allow them to transform connectivity into local or national influence?

- Under what conditions do connectivity and positionality reinforce each other? How do transnational resources translate into domestic legitimacy, and how does local authority, in turn, feed back into regional or global networks?

The selection process will concentrate primarily on the scholarly contribution of the proposal and its alignment with the constellation framework. In keeping with the COST principle of promoting both excellence and inclusiveness (https://www.cost.eu/about/strategy/excellence-and-inclusiveness/), we especially encourage applications from Young Researcher and Innovator (YRI) and from participants based in Inclusiveness Target Countries (ITCs). Travel and accommodation will be funded through COST Action CA23149 via the e-COST system.

Extended abstracts (500–700 words) should outline the core argument of the proposed paper, its theoretical contribution, empirical material, and methodological approach. Authors should clearly specify how their contribution engages with the constellation framework through connectivity, positionality, or their interaction; and indicate the expected analytical insights regarding effects (discursive, institutional, legislative, or behavioral).

Please submit your proposal by 15 January 2026 via this form:
https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=NoSMxAw-fUG8sFiBCyCQUrkcaPhk8yZPpTr-cIzYDMhUM0NCSk1aUThRUlhBOUlCOUdUTEpSNjdOOC4u

Notifications of acceptance will be sent by 15 February 2026.

We look forward to your submissions and to bringing together a diverse group of scholars to advance collaborative research on the actors and networks driving anti-gender mobilizations.

Susana Galán (Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals)
Mariana Murayeva (University of Helsinki)
Šárka Kolmašová (Metropolitan University Prague)
Didem Unal Abaday (University of Helsinki)