Following last year’s Pushing Boarders London, we have joined forces with the City of Malmö, Bryggeriet and Regional Museum Kristianstad to organise the second international conference on skateboarding, taking place from 14-18 August 2019 in Malmö, Sweden.

Pushing Boarders aims to gauge, sense and approximate the vibration of urethane on asphalt, the lived experience of the travelling skater, the affectivities of an increasingly diverse community. Over the course of four full days, pro skateboarders, community groups, NGOs, policy-makers and scholars will explore and draw out the current state of the practice, including socio-political issues, artistic interventions. This year’s event will specifically focus on representation, sexuality, NGOs, pedagogy, skate-friendly cities, cultural heritage, and the arts.

This call for papers is primarily aimed at those interested in presenting at or taking part in the ‘University of Skate’ sessions at the Pushing Boarders conference – these encompass academic panel discussions, scholarly workshops, and an early-career forum. The University of Skate provides a dedicated space within the wider Pushing Boarders conference for scholars and researchers who are currently researching and writing about skateboarding; prospective academics and post-graduate students/people considering postgraduate study; and people within academic or quasi-academic roles who aren't currently bringing their practice as skaters or interest in skateboarding into their scholarship but wish to.

If you’d like to contribute to Pushing Boarders in another capacity (from an NGO, skate media or skateboard industry perspective), please get in touch via info [at] pushingboarders.com.

For the University of Skate, we are looking for paper proposals that examine the various dimensions of skateboarding, which may include but are not limited to:

-          Cultural heritage and collective memories: from Southbank and LOVE Park to Morrison Park and The Marble Wave. NB: This workshop will be co-hosted by Regional Museum Kristianstadand their Skate! project

-          Pedagogy, skill acquisition, and education

-          Urban design, policy change, development and accessibility: towards inclusive cities and skateboard communities

-          Matrixes of power: post- and decolonial skateboarding projects

-          Ecologies of skate: waste, pollution, and sustainability

-          LGBTQI and intersectionality

-          Publishing skateboarding: Sites of scholarship from peer reviewed journal articles to podcasts. What is the potential of skaters’ energy, ethics, politics, and demographic representation to revitalise academia and other types of publications across books, skate mags, zines, blogs, #skatetwitter. How to publish on skateboarding more widely (reflecting on the advantages and disadvantages of academic, quasi-academic and non-academic platforms)?

We especially encourage proposals from LGBTQI, feminist and BAME scholars. Please submit your proposal for a 10-15 minute paper to Sander Holsgens (sander.holsgens.14 [at] ucl.ac.uk), Dani Abulhawa (d.abulhawa [at] shu.ac.uk), Chris Lawton (christopher.lawton [at] ntu.ac.uk) or Thom Callan-Riley (thomas.callan.16 [at] ucl.ac.uk) by 19 May 2019. Proposals should include the title of a paper, a 250-word abstract, and short biographical and bibliographical statement (100 words).

The University of Skate is part of Pushing Boarders, which is organised by SkatePal, Long Live Southbank, Skateism and Re-verb Skateboarding. For more information, please visit pushingboarders.com.