2025 SALSA XV Biennial Conference

University of Helsinki

4-6 August 2025

The XV SALSA Biennial Conference 2025 will take place at the University of Helsinki, on August 4-6th, 2025. Conference Organizer and Academic Program chairs are working alongside the university’s Indigenous Studies Program, to foster collaboration between Lowland South-Americanists in an extraordinary setting. Building on the cosmopolitanism of the SALSA community and relying on the University of Helsinki’s longstanding role as a venue for Indigenous Sámi scholars, as well as the Global Indigenous Study Programme’s groundbreaking approach to Indigenous social life and politics, the Conference will offer a rare opportunity to further SALSA’s mission while broadening our community’s conversations and multiplying our interlocutors.

This year, funds will be used to support Indigenous and non-traditional peoples’ participation in SALSA’s XV Biennial Meeting in Helsinki.  Donations are tax deductible in the U.S., as SALSA is 501(c)3 non-profit organization. Thank you for considering supporting SALSA’s ability to make our meetings more inclusive of non-traditional voices and perspectives.

Academic Program

Participants can present a paper in one panel only, but can also act as discussant in another panel. In that case, they should fill out separate forms for each one of their roles.

Conference Highlights

Welcome Reception

On Monday, August the 4th of 2025, a Welcome Reception will be offered at the City Hall of Helsinki.

Keynote Dialogue

Shuar poet, intellectual and presenter Maria Clara Sharupi Jua has accepted our invitation to dialogue with Philippe Descola for the Keynote Dialogue at the SALSA XV Biennial Conference.

Conference Dinner

On Tuesday the 5th or Wednesday the 6th of August, the Conference Dinner will take place, including a concert by the Sámi artist Áilu Valle.

Indigenous Participants

Indigenous and traditional community member participants registration fee will be waived.

The organizers are working on fundraising to cover travel costs of Indigenous and traditional community members.

Co-Creations and Silences in Amazonian Research

The concept of co-creation is central to ethically sustainable research, emphasizing mutual respect and benefit, and shared knowledge between researchers and research participants. Co-creative and reciprocal approaches often remain absent in interactions between local Amazonian communities of all sorts and different kinds of societal actors. This conference invites participants to reflect on co-creation and (de)colonial practices in research and society at large. We wish to explore both the contexts and practices of co-creation that permeate research and other social relations, including more-than-human actors. We also wish to investigate silences — both intentional and unintentional— which can significantly impact social relationships and research, but which often remain overlooked. Such silences may arise from historical trauma, ignorance, politics, differential power relations or the imposition of dominant research paradigms that marginalize voices. We investigate how these silences can be recognized, understood, and addressed within research and by different researchers.

Questions considered by the conference could include the following: How are different positions of power and voices operationalized in research, and what is being silenced? How can people from diverse backgrounds (Indigenous, ethnic, economic, class- and/or sexual backgrounds, and (de)politicized non-human actors) have voice? What kinds of relationships and webs of relations does research create? How to go beyond listening to the silences and toward engaging in actual dialogues between equals in research? What forms or language can dialogue and co-creation take when participants and presences include more-than-human beings, rivers, ancestral beings, spirits, birds, endangered species, corporations, machinery, technology, cattle, pests, and toxins, among others? In co-creative relations, ethical issues are important. Who has the authority to give consent to research? Whose silences can be identified and who is missing?

Conference Organizing Team

Conference organizer

Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen, University of Helsinki.

Co-organizers

Francisco Apurinã (postdoctoral researcher, U. of Helsinki).
Olli Kaukonen-Lindholm, Pierre Auzerau, Jimena Bigá, Sini Korja (PhD researchers, U. of Helsinki).
Tuija Veintie (senior researcher, U. of Helsinki).

Academic Program Chairs

Minna Opas, University of Turku, Finland.
Luiz Costa, Museu Nacional, UFRJ, Brazil.

Webpage: https://salsa-tipiti.org/salsa-conferences/2025-helsinki/
Contact: [email protected]

Featured image: Kaisa Library of the University of Helsinki.