While we seek presentations that specifically speak to this year’s theme, any submission across the broader study of food, agriculture, culture, nutrition, society, and sustainability will be considered, including proposals from and with scholars, practitioners, community partners, activists, policymakers, and others.

Abstract Deadline January 31, 2026 at 11:59 pm. Notification of acceptance by approximately February 28, 2026. Submissions must be 1500 characters or less.

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This conference invites critical and bold engagements with the idea of Just Transformations in Food Systems: transformation processes that center sustainability, equity, sovereignty, ecological care, and other forms of transformative action. We seek contributions that examine and confront the structural and systemic roots of food system injustices while illuminating the pathways being forged by communities, movements, andpractitioners striving to create regenerative, democratic, and just alternatives.

We invite participants to share scholarship on the creative, courageous, and often underrecognized work already underway to reimagine and rebuild food systems and society from the ground up, reclaiming agency over diets, food culture, land, labor, knowledge, and nourishment. We seek contributions that bring disciplinary, interdisciplinary, and transdisciplinary approaches to the analysis of structures, systems, and the cultures of food and agriculture that shape how we relate to land, labor, nourishment, and one another. This includes, but is not limited to, scholarship on the following: developing alternative food systems, Indigenous-led land rematriation, seed sovereignty eSorts, advancing rights-based approaches, women’s cooperatives promoting agroecological farming, youth mobilizations, confronting corporate agribusiness, neighborhood mutual aid networks, communities working to revitalize food cultures grounded in care, reciprocity, seasonality, and memory, and how cultural expressions, values, and traditions are being mobilized, reimagined, and protected. The aim is to stimulate thinking, discussion, and collaboration on deep, holistic, and enduring transformation of the food system. In addition to general sessions, this year’s conference will also feature two themed tracks building on critical research and engagement being undertaken by UVM Institutes.

The first is a track on agroecology and its role in just transformations. UVM is home to the Institute of Agroecology, which is working to seed more equitable and sustainable food systems through research, learning, and action. Building on the Institute's work, the agroecology track will feature papers that address urgent agrifood challenges and adopt holistic socio-ecological approaches. Papers will focus on agroecological topics, including livelihoods, biodiversity, polycultures, the right to food, and the co-creation of knowledge.

The second track is ecological economics and just food systems transformations. UVM is home to the Gund Institute for Environment, an interdisciplinary research accelerator focused on tackling environmental challenges, and the Leadership for the Ecozoic (L4E), a community of practice on ecological economics and growth. Building on the work of Gund and L4E, the ecological economics track will feature papers on topics such as food as a commons, non-market food systems, economies of care, and degrowth. If you would like your paper to be included in one of these tracks, please indicate so when submitting.

Papers not designated to a track will be placed in the general sessions.

The meeting will primarily be in person on the UVM campus in Burlington, VT. However, understanding that some may have difficulty reaching Burlington, we will provide a limited number of hybrid sessions. These sessions will feature both in-person and virtual presentations and will be held in rooms equipped for hybrid meetings. There will be up to two hybrid sessions per time slot. People presenting from outside the United States will have priority for these slots.  The presidential addresses and keynotes will also be livestreamed. 

Please send any questions about this call to david.conner@uvm.edu.