Why SPACES? Discovering the idea behind this year’s Y-Conference.

For its annual conference, YCIE chooses one canopy theme, ideally expressed by a single word. For 2026, we went with SPACES. Space is never neutral; it is always produced, contested, inhabited, imagined, and politicized.

From Henri Lefebvre’s The Production of Space to Doreen Massey’s For Space, scholars have long emphasized that space is not merely a container in which social life unfolds, but is constitutive of social life itself. In this sense, the Y-Conference’s focus on “SPACES” invites scholars to engage with space as a theoretical object, a lived experience, and a site of power, memory, resistance, and transformation.

Through Y-Conference, YCIE aims to become a new center of academic attraction in the region for those conducting research in the contexts of Eurasia, the Caucasus, (Post)Socialism, and beyond.

🔗 Registration is now open!