Queer Epistemics in/of the Central and Eastern Europe: Geopolitics of Knowledge, Science and Legitimacy in the Struggles over Gender & Sexuality

11th CBEES ANNUAL CONFERENCE: Knowing Eastern Europe and the Baltics Programme At a time when uncertainty defines both the world and what we know of it—when knowledge appears fragmented, contested, and inadequate—we turn our attention to the very processes of knowing. How is knowledge produced, by whom, where, and under what conditions? How do shifting geopolitical landscapes, emergent crises, and new epistemic frameworks challenge modes of understanding? The CBEES Annual Conference 2025 will explore the shifting grounds of knowledge production and critically examine processes of knowing, geopolitics of knowledge, and different positionalities with respect to Eastern Europe and the Baltics. This undertaking also means to embrace the unexpected and the conference is an opportunity to investigate how knowledge emerges in moments of rupture, how new forms of knowing take shape, and how new relations and vantage points might reconfigure theoretical and empirical landscapes of knowing.At the same time, the question arises of how to approach the allure of denial and ignorance. We invite contributions exploring conceptual, empirical, and methodological underpinnings of knowing and knowledge production on topics featuring Eastern Europe and the Baltics. Both contemporary and historical perspectives are of interest. Proposals are welcome for roundtables, panels, and individual paper presentations. We invite scholars from all disciplines, offering the following points for inspiration: “East” and “West” dimensions in knowledge production. Questions of centre and periphery. Constructing and naming a region - regions as epistemic entities, objects, subjects. Paradigm shifts; critical challenges to canon and master theories. Empirical knowledge and possibilities to challenge universalities through particularities. Doubt, indeterminate knowledge, and how to approach the unknowable. Negation and denial; the allure of ignorance. Interrogating epistemic hierarchies and geopolitical assumptions that have historically shaped research in and on the region. The decolonial turn and epistemology. Gender and knowledge production. Claims and limitations of authority and expertise. How researchers’ positionalities, and engagements with the region shape epistemologies. Embodied, situated, and practical knowledge. Numbers and data. Knowledge production through quantitative research. Artistic expressions of knowing and the unknown. Violence, war, and the impact of existential threats on processes of knowing. Truth and lies, understanding propaganda production. New technologies and AI. Constructing the present by erasing/rewriting the past; remembering and forgetting as forms of knowing/unknowing.