AASSC 44th Annual Conference: May 27 - 29, 2026
The forty-fourth annual conference of the Association for the Advancement of Scandinavian Studies in Canada (AASSC) will be held in Edmonton, Alberta, from Wednesday, May 27, to Friday, May 29, 2026. The conference will be held at the University of Alberta and the Augustana Campus in Camrose.
In May 2025, the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences announced that Congress 2026 had been cancelled due to the inability to secure an institutional host. In response, the AASSC executive has decided to organize the 2026 conference independently from Congress in Edmonton, Alberta.
Call for Papers: The 2026 conference welcomes submissions on any Scandinavian- or Nordic-related topic across all disciplines. This year, however, the AASSC is particularly interested in papers that explore the role of crises across time and space. Contributions may address historical crises, contemporary challenges, or potential future risks in the Scandinavian or Nordic context, encompassing political and economic upheavals, cultural and social disruptions, environmental shocks, existential crises represented in literature, and related topics.
In recent years, conference presentations have encompassed research in anthropology, archaeology, business studies, folkloristics, geography, history, Indigenous studies, linguistics, literary studies, medieval studies, philosophy, political science, religious studies, sociology, and other related fields.
Fees: There is no registration fee for participating in the conference, but participants must cover travel and accommodation costs and meals. All presenters and audience members must be paid-up AASSC members by May 27, 2026. You can become a member or renew your membership through the AASSC’s website at the following link: (https://www.aassc.com/membership). Regular membership is $75. The membership fee for student, retired and unwaged members is $30. You can also donate to AASSC/gift a membership here: (https://www.aassc.com/Donations).
Accommodations and travel costs: Conference participants will have the option to book on-campus accommodations (dorms) at the University of Alberta. Another on-campus option is the Campus Tower Suites. The AASSC can offer limited travel funding for students and presenters without access to adequate institutional funding. If you would like to be considered for a bursary, please note this with your proposal.
Excursion: We are planning an excursion in connection with our conference, open to participants and their guests. If you and any guests travelling with you would be interested in joining the conference excursion, kindly indicate this when submitting your proposal. We will provide more details at a later date, but it would be helpful for us to be able to gauge interest and plan accordingly.
Paper proposals should be submitted as an abstract of no more than 250 words to tugland@ubishops.ca by 1. December, 2025.
I would appreciate it if you could circulate this Call for Papers to your colleagues.
Program Chair and Vice-President of the AASSC.
Trygve Ugland