Latvian Academy of Culture, Riga / Latvia
June 30th -July 2nd, 2026

Give and Take: Transdisciplinary Spaces of “Cohesive Netting” From Glocal
History to Digitalization, Augmented Realities, and AI-Techniques
Congress directed by Dagmar Reichardt (Latvian Academy of Culture, Latvia), Raffaele Tumino (Università di Macerata, Italy), and Costantino Maeder  (Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium)

After that the 1st International Congress of Transcultural Studies (April 9th-10th, 2025, University of Macerata, Italy) has analyzed the thematic contexts of Borderlands, Mobility and Rights in the Era of Glocalization and focused aesthetical, sociocultural, political, legal and ecological premises of Transculturality as a (Re-) Constructive Method, in the 2nd International Congress of Transcultural Studies we aim to go a step further.
Inspired by the most recent publication about “The World as a Netting”, authored by the inventor of the postmodern concept of transculturality Wolfgang Welsch (Welsch 2025) we aim to question what he describes there as a “network euphoria”. Already one year before, in We have Always Been Transcultural (Welsch 2024), Welsch had synthesized his general philosophical approach in an art-related transcultural comparison, thus delivering a first big overview of transcultural phenomenology specifically applied to the arts. From these two recent books, we seize Welsch’s suggestion of the net-metaphor first proposed by him in the 1990s (Welsch 1999). According to the evident analogy of the theoretical concept of Welsch’s netterminology and the ongoing digitalization of cultures and societies worldwide, the congress specifically intends to apply it to artistic practice, creative industries and generally to Transcultural Studies in the digital era by critically discussing new transdisciplinary possibilities and enquiring glocal unforeseen (or, rather, predictable?) collateral effects.

From the artistic and transdisciplinary cohesive netting between transculturality, the internet, and the arts, we wish to continue to link transcultural theory and contemporary realpolitik not only with today’s social realities but retrospectively also with the transcultural history of multi-ethnical Anthropology and Ethnology, Philosophy, and civilization processes.
Within the core focus remain also teacher trainings, didactical techniques, and pedagogical approaches (Tumino 2019) applied under the lens of transcultural networks, third spaces (Bhabha 1994) and/or postcolonial melting pots (Chambers 1994, 2017). Since the Anthropocene and the very first roots of European history — to mention the framing of just one possible case study — nomadic movement, media opportunities, and increasing federalistic cohesion show progress. They were particularly enabled by the digitalization not only in academia but also on the level of economic networking, thus inevitably producing a yet undefined, selectively reflected, but often unnoticed world culture to come (Reichardt 2023).

From a sociological perspective, the so-called Global Citizenship Education and transcultural cosmopolitism remain highly desirable overarching goals. Spanning from European as well as non-European) collaboration networks and foreign language acquisition to transcultural gender studies, biopolitics, ecocriticism, women’s liberation movements, and further sociocultural modernization processes, we accept all proposals that highlight specific trends and transfers that promote participatory societies, polycultural connections, and decentralized, highly integrative dynamics. Travelling literature, postmigration storytelling, translation studies, children’s books, and/or new adult literature, as well as progressive declinations of world literature, may also be included in the critical analysis and academic discussion, as should further “cohesive” tools. Among them, all kind of aesthetic, media, musical, health-related, ecological and/or culinary approaches are welcome as study cases, as long as they enhance specific transcultural “knots” that interlace transdisciplinary spaces with reciprocal interactions between various (i.e. more than three) cultures and/or are mutually (or in multiple ways) related to animation techniques, digital glocalization or electronic distribution methods which are interweaved with Augmented Reality and digitalization.

While the 1st International Congress of Transcultural Studies held in 2025 in Italy challenged the transformation of the theoretical dictum associated with the Derridian concept of Deconstruction (Derrida 1982, 1997), further deepened since the 1960s, into a contemporary transcultural challenge of a (Re-) Constructionism of nowadays, the 2nd International Congress of Transcultural Studies to take place in 2026 in Latvia intends to question the definition of Post-Postmodernism (Nealon 2012). On the threshold to proclaim a new era, we will ask if—and if so, to what an extend— Post-Postmodernism is currently turning into a “post-postmodern” Transculturalism (Welsch 1988) in the sign of a collective Giving and Taking, as formulated in our conference title.

Thus, broadly speaking, we will continue to conceive the field of Transculture as a “laboratory”, in which to examine concise artistic, literary and communicative landscapes under the banner of an education that aims to re-establish confident gazes toward a human paradigm that has always existed (as per Welsch) and that, at the same time, has to be “(re-) constructed”, and, more precisely, “(re-) netted” or “intertwined”, in view of a convivial and sustainable
future.

The conference will be held in English (but presentations in other languages, accompanied by English texts or slides by the author, are not excluded, provided they are
specifically requested in advance and approved by the organizers). The non-representative bibliography attached to this CFP has a purely preliminary function. Following the conference, publication in the journal Transculturale: Passaggi tra scienze, pratiche di energie is planned.

Speakers invited to give a lecture are asked to send the title and abstract to the three responsible organizers—Dagmar Reichardt (Diese E-Mail-Adresse ist vor Spambots geschützt! Zur Anzeige muss JavaScript eingeschaltet sein!), Raffaelino Tumino (Diese E-Mail-Adresse ist vor Spambots geschützt! Zur Anzeige muss JavaScript eingeschaltet sein!) and Costantino Maeder (Diese E-Mail-Adresse ist vor Spambots geschützt! Zur Anzeige muss JavaScript eingeschaltet sein!)—by November 16, 2025.
Abstracts should be approximately 300 words, including the name and affiliation of the speaker, the title of the talk, short bibliographical references, and a short CV. Presenters will receive confirmation of their topic proposals by December 10, 2025.


Short Bibliography: 
Bhabha, Homi K.: The Location of Culture, London & New York, Routledge, 1994.
Chambers, Iain: Migrancy, Culture, Identity, London/New York, Routledge, 1994.
Chambers, Iain: Postcolonial Interruptions, Unauthorised Modernities, London, Rowman & Littlefield, 2017.
Derrida, Jacques. “Différance”, in: Margins of Philosophy, Chicago & London, University of Chicago Press, 1982.
Derrida, Jacques: Of Grammatology, trans. from French by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Baltimore & London, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997 (corrected edition) [1967].
Nealon, Jeffrey T.: Post-Postmodernism or The Cultural Logic of Just-in-Time Capitalism, Stanford (CA), Stanford University Press, 2012.
Reichardt, Dagmar: “Transkulturelle Neukonfigurationen des deutsch-italienischen Beziehungsgeflechts: Europäische Wege zur Weltkultur und die Bedeutung inklusiv, rhizomatisch und transversal ausgerichteter Koexistenzparameter”, in: Antje Lobin & Eva-Tabea Meineke (eds.), Baustein für Europa: Italien im Fokus deutschsprachiger Bildung, München, AVM -
Akademische Verlagsgemeinschaft München, 2023, pp. 25-62.
Tumino, Raffaele: “The Educational Action of Transculturality to Decolonize Minds, Deterritorialize
Culture and Democracy, Creolize the World”, in: Politics, Citizenship, Diversity and Inclusion, vol. I, Roma, Associazione Per Scuola Democratica, 2019, pp. 191-196.
Welsch, Wolfgang (ed.): Wege aus der Moderne. Schlüsseltexte der Postmoderne-Diskussion, Weinheim, VCH Verlagsgesellschaft, 1988.
Welsch, Wolfgang: “Transculturality – The Puzzling Form of Cultures Today”, in: Featherstone, Mike & Lash, Scott (ed.): Spaces of Culture: City, Nation, World, London, Sage, 1999, pp. 194-213
[online: https://welsch.uni-jena.de/papers/W_Wlelsch_Transculturality.html].
Welsch, Wolfgang: We Have Always Been Transcultural: The Arts as an Example, Leiden/Boston, Brill, 2024.
Welsch, Wolfgang: Die Welt als Gewebe. Vom antiken Himmelszelt zur zeitgenössischen NetzwerkEuphorie, Torrazza Piemonte (TO), Amazon Italia Logistica, 2025.