Place and Power: BC Studies Conference 2025
Place and Power: BC Studies Conference 2025 takes place on the unceded ancestral territory of the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓-speaking xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) People at the Point Grey campus of the University of British Columbia. Opened one hundred years ago, this campus occupies a site where xʷməθkʷəy̓əm people have been transmitting knowledge, law, protocol, and history from one generation to the next for millennia.
As conference organizers, we humbly recognize xʷməθkʷəy̓əm rights, title, and jurisdiction over the territory on which we work and learn as uninvited guests. We feel honoured that the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm Elder and UBC adjunct professor Larry Grant accepted our invitation to speak to delegates, and we are thrilled that the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm artist and UBC alumna Diamond Point granted rights to display her beautiful work, “Interconnected,” on conference materials.
The title of Point’s work could not be more fitting for this gathering. For many decades, the BC Studies Conference has connected scholars across the humanities and social sciences to enable rich conversation about and across BC. First held in Victoria in October 1979, it became a biennial event with hosting duties circulating among BC universities and colleges. This tradition continued until 2021 when the University of the Fraser Valley hosted the conference online during the Covid-19 pandemic. We are thrilled to come together once more in 2025 with scholars, educators, and other practitioners whose work concerns what we know, and how we know, about the place currently called British Columbia.
This year’s conference theme, “Place and Power,” highlights two concepts that are inextricably interconnected in British Columbia. Specifically, the theme was inspired by a new BA requirement in the Faculty of Arts at UBC-Vancouver, which engages BA students with the history and present of xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) People, with settler colonialism in BC, and with the systems of power, inequality, community, and diversity that make this place. This curricular innovation is among a range of changes in pedagogy and public discourse across the province that flow from and intersect with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s Calls to Action which are now a decade old.
With our call for papers, we hoped to invite new interconnections among people who learn and teach about BC. We sought both to attract newcomers to the conference, and welcome back long-time attendees who have kept this tradition going. We encouraged potential presenters to interpret the theme in any manner that deepened collective understanding of this place, and particularly invited approaches that spoke to pressing issues of our time, from the rights of Indigenous Peoples to climate justice and beyond.
We were astonished at the unprecedented response we received from researchers and educators across multiple domains. We are enormously pleased to offer a program that includes Indigenous knowledge keepers, community researchers, archives and museum professionals, labour organizers, health policy activists, artists, filmmakers, teachers, and academics from every career stage and multiple disciplines.
Welcome to all of you! We look forward to learning, talking, and visiting together.
-Laura Ishiguro and Paige Raibmon, co-organizers