THE BENGAL SYMPOSIUM 

13 – 14 November 2026 

People, Land, and Identities Beyond Colonial Divides  

(2nd Edition | Online)

The Bengal Symposium is envisioned as an annual, transdisciplinary academic platform dedicated to fostering critical and inclusive dialogue on Bengal’s deep past, lived histories, and cultural landscapes. Building on the success of its inaugural edition, the 2nd Edition of the symposium invites scholars and early-career researchers to reflect on the intertwined relationships between people, land, and identities, and to examine how these relationships have been shaped, fragmented, and reimagined beyond colonial frameworks. 

Colonial regimes imposed not only political borders but also enduring epistemic, cultural, and psychological divides that continue to shape how Bengal’s histories, landscapes, and identities are understood today. The Bengal Symposium seeks to move beyond these inherited boundaries by foregrounding new critical frameworks for interpreting Bengal’s deep history, emphasizing the continuity of common life, shared heritage, and resistance to both political and psychological borders imposed by colonial divides. 

Another key objective of this working-group–style annual symposium is to bridge knowledge production in and about Bengal with broader global academic conversations. As part of this effort, we have assembled a scientific committee of early- to mid-career international scholars whose visibility and engagement aim to inspire students and early-career researchers exploring the diverse histories and cultures of Bengal and its neighboring regions across time. 

The 2nd Edition places particular emphasis on how landscapes, environments, oral history, migration, mobility, memory, and everyday life have contributed to the formation of identities in Bengal across time. Rather than privileging state-centered or elite narratives, the symposium encourages approaches that highlight subaltern perspectives, local knowledge systems, and alternative historiographies, attentive to common life, shared survival histories, and human–environment entanglements.

The Bengal Symposium welcomes contributions that are critical, reflexive, and methodologically diverse. We aim to create a space where archaeology, history, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, heritage studies, oral history, art history, folklore, environmental humanities and related fields can engage in meaningful conversation. 

Submissions may engage, but are not limited to, the following themes: 

◑ People–land relationships and identity formation in Bengal 

◑ Environmental histories, riverine landscapes, deltas, forests, and agrarian worlds

◑ History and archaeology of everyday life, settlement, mobility, and subsistence

◑ Oral histories, memory, and place-based narratives

◑ Sacred landscapes and ritual geographies

◑ Indigenous and local knowledge systems

◑ Art, architecture, material culture, and aesthetics in Bengal

◑ Epigraphy, numismatics, and textual sources for social history

◑ Heritage, conservation, and community engagement

◑ Decolonial, postcolonial, and transregional perspectives on Bengal

◑ Cross-border cultural continuities across Bengal and neighboring regions 

◑ Colonial dive and rule policies, and their long-term social and cultural impacts

◑ Borders, partition, displacement, and lived experiences of division 

Participation in the symposium is completely free of charge, and we warmly welcome scholars from all career stages to join us. We especially encourage early-career researchers and graduate students to submit their work and become part of this growing, collaborative platform. 

Through engaging presentations and open, moderated discussions, the Bengal Symposium seeks to present a model of multicultural identities coexisting within a shared historical and cultural space. This approach encourages us to see Bengal not as a divided past, but as a shared and living landscape. At the same time, it offers a broader model for understanding multicultural landscapes in a world increasingly marked by intolerance and cultural vulnerability.