The CASA 2022 Committee is delighted to announce the theme for the 5th Cambridge Annual Student Archaeology Conference: Crisis and Resilience.
As the world continues to battle against the COVID-19 pandemic and struggle with climate change, there is no better time to talk about the resilience of humankind in the face of various crises.
Archaeological evidence has illuminated many crises the past societies withstood, be it climate change, natural disaster, plague or warfare. It is our job as archaeologists to not only identify how these crises had impacts on past societies but also understand how people tackled such devastation and moved forward. Such explorations of the past aim to inspire the present and beyond. The key question we ought to ask is: what can we learn from the past that will help us now and in the future?
The Conference will take place in hybrid format between the 16th and the 18th of September 2022.
The call for sessions is now open, and we invite undergraduate and postgraduate students to submit a proposal. Topics can include but are not limited to:
- Exploring past disease, plague, environmental change, natural disaster, conflict, warfare, and violence and their relation to human society and/or the body
- Learning from the past: archaeological and heritage perspectives on contemporary issues
- The emergence and evolution of diverse human technologies to cope with external change and/or challenges
- Ethnicity, trauma and resilience in times of crisis: solidarity and bottom-up approaches
Stay tuned for the call for papers this coming May!
For further details and information on past conferences you can check the dedicated CASA website.
About CASA:
The Cambridge Annual Student Archaeology Conference developed out of the Annual Student Archaeology Conference, which was an initiative formed out of a conglomeration of Cambridge, Oxford, Durham and York students, and ran from 2013-2016. In 2017, Cambridge became the home of the conference which has continued as CASA since then.
CASA offers students of archaeology and related fields (undergraduate to graduate) the opportunity to present their research to an international audience. The conference themes proposed each year are purposely kept general and open in order to encourage an inclusive discussion around multiple topics and approaches to archaeological research from different perspectives. At the same time, CASA themes are also conceived to reflect current issues, debates and historical events both inside and beyond academia.
