The Association for Cultural Studies (“ACS”) is an international non-profit organization founded in 2002 and registered in Finland. Its main objective is to form and promote a global community interested in the field of Cultural Studies. To achieve that goal, ACS focuses on building interdisciplinary and transnational connections between researchers and professionals from different backgrounds.
ACS serves as a fundamental platform for establishing, maintaining and strengthening ties between scholars from different disciplines, countries and regions of the world. Its main activities include organizing international conferences, with a particular emphasis on the Crossroads in Cultural Studies event. ACS also provides information about scholars and scholarships and promotes Cultural Studies through various initiatives.
The Crossroads in Cultural Studies Conference has established itself as an important biennial event in the field of Cultural Studies, bringing together academics from all five continents to share research, visions and insights. This international gathering has played a significant role in promoting global discussion about Cultural Studies. It is noteworthy that despite its global scope, the event has not yet been held in South America and 2026 gives ACS a great opportunity to expand the involvement of researchers from this region.
The 2026 edition marks a historic moment by being held for the first time in Latin America, with the theme “Decolonizing Cultural Studies: Leisure, Bodies, Performances, Territories and Universities”. This theme reflects a critical and contemporary agenda that seeks to question and rethink hegemonic knowledge structures in the field of Cultural Studies, emerging from a global context where decolonial movements are gaining strength, especially in the Global South, proposing new epistemologies that value historically marginalized knowledge.
The University of Tampere, in Finland, hosted the event on two occasions – in 2002 and in 2014. Between 2004 and 2010, the conference traveled through different continents: in 2004 it was held at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA; in 2006 at Istanbul Bilgi University, Istanbul, Turkey; in 2008, at the University of the West Indies, Kingston, Jamaica and in 2010 it was held at Lingnan University, Hong Kong. The 2012 edition took place in Paris, France, organized by Sorbonne Nouvelle University, Sorbonne Paris Cité in partnership with UNESCO. In 2016, the conference occurred in Sydney, Australia, in a joint organization by the University of Sydney and Western Sydney University. The 2018 edition was hosted by Shanghai University, in Shanghai, China. All these universities carry out internationally recognized work of excellence and now the possibility of holding Crossroads in Cultural Studies at UFMG Brazil with the support of CNPq is an exciting prospect.
UFMG, founded in 1927, is a regional and national leader in teaching, extension, culture, scientific research and patent generation, bringing together around 53,000 people in its academic activities distributed across 20 academic units, 94 undergraduate programs, 90 graduate programs and 860 research centers. The event will be held at the Pampulha Campus, a privileged space that combines academic excellence with architectural and environmental heritage.
The organization is under the responsibility of the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Leisure Studies (PPGIEL/UFMG), the first and only Brazilian interdisciplinary program dedicated to leisure studies, a pioneer in Latin America, with solid experience in organizing international scientific events. The realization has the support of the International Network in Cultural Studies (RIEC), which integrates 10 universities from 5 Portuguese-speaking countries, strengthening the international and collaborative character of the event.
The proposed theme will encompass discussions about leisure as a space of resistance and subjectivity production, bodies and performances as central categories for understanding contemporary power dynamics, physical and symbolic territories where cultural practices develop, and universities as institutions that can either reproduce or contest colonial power structures. This proposal aligns with the Brazilian and Latin American context, offering a unique opportunity for decolonial discussions to be developed from a South American perspective, contributing to the decentralization of global academic production.
Crossroads 2022 was a historic conference as it was held fully online. The event was co-organized by the Association for Cultural Studies (ACS) and the Centre for English Studies of the University of Lisbon (CEAUL/ULICES), at the Faculty of Letters of the University of Lisbon. Initially, the conference was scheduled to take place in person in Lisbon in July 2020 but had to be rescheduled due to the global COVID-19 pandemic. The 2026 crossroads marks the return of the conference, once again in-person, and it gives us great pleasure to invite you to this event.
Information about schedule, registrations and call for papers are available on this website.
See you there!