31st European Maya Conference: Paris, France
"AGENCY IN MESOAMERICA"
December 07th to 11th 2026
The 31st Annual European Maya Conference is organised by Wayeb – the European Association of Mayanists – in cooperation with Paris Nanterre and Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne universities, École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE), École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO), Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), UNAM France, and Archaïos in Paris. The conference will begin with three days of workshops, held from Monday 7th–Wednesday 9th December, and will conclude with a two-day symposium, taking place from Thursday 10th–Friday 11th December 2026. As part of the symposium, we also plan to organise a poster session.
The theme for the 31st European Maya Conference is AGENCY IN MESOAMERICA. The topic will be explored from a variety of perspectives.
During the symposium, we will explore the nature and dynamics of agency in Mesoamerica. The study of agency analyses the mechanisms through which diverse entities gain the power to act, how that power is distributed, and the ways it manifests – from attributing responsibility for actions to its effective execution and impact. It examines the forces at work in societies, their dynamics, and the gradual or abrupt processes of transformations they generate. The notion of “agent” is not restricted to human but extends to non-human entities, including spirits, ancestors, deities, animals, plants, stones, and artefacts.
Drawing on diverse socio-political, domestic, agricultural, artisanal, and everyday contexts – from settlement patterns and (cosmo)diplomatic negotiations embedded in ritual practices to the fabric of collective memory – this meeting explores how the power to act is impulsed, constituted, channelled, contested, and controlled across Mesoamerica. It assesses the sources of these powers, both diachronically and spatially, along with their intensities, directions, and spatiotemporal properties, particularly the driving factors and mechanisms of transformation.
THE CONFERENCE ENCOMPASSES:
Monuments, objects, and imagery
How do images, murals, sculptures, codices, and artefacts act upon viewers and communities for political or other social purposes? What mechanisms enable them to mediate divine-human interactions or enforce hierarchies? How are monuments contested or re-signified, and to what ends?
Mesoamerican writing, texts, and inscriptions
How do glyphs, inscriptions, texts, and documents exert agentive influence beyond recording? What syntactic, semantic, and rhetorical structures express intentionality, causality, prophecy, or ritual efficacy in scribes’ roles, alphabetic appropriations, and ritual socialisation?
Architecture, landscape, and built environment
How do natural features, architectural modifications to the natural environment, urbanism, and planning imbue landscapes and places with meaning, social order, and dynamics? How is this environmental or spatial agency contested or transformed amid cultural shifts? What alignments channel non-human powers through built environments?
Oral and written narratives
How do colonial and indigenous texts and narratives mobilise voices in present-day conflicts? What narrative strategies attribute agency to social groups, individuals, or even deities and other non-human actors across pre-Hispanic, colonial, and contemporary discourses, including resistance, continuity, transformation, and (inter)cultural interaction.
Mesoamerican languages
How do indigenous language speakers acquire or demonstrate agency in grammar, discourse structures, register and language choices? What linguistic shifts – such as split ergativity, voice markers, focus constructions, or lexicon – reflect resistance, continuity, or hybridisation in daily communication amid colonial legacies and cultural revitalisation?
Contemporary indigenous studies
How do indigenous scholars and activists respond to outsider impositions? What cultural frameworks reclaim Mesoamerican ontologies – such as relational continuums and non-human alterity – foregrounding collective relationality over isolated individualism?
Transmission of traditional knowledge
How is traditional knowledge transmitted through oral pedagogies, embodied practices, or digital media today? What agents participate in contemporary knowledge networks, sustaining relational ontologies across generations?
The theme of the conference will be approached from various disciplinary points of view – including (but not restricted to) anthropology, archaeology, biology, epigraphy, history, iconography, Indigenous studies, linguistics, and psychology – as well as interdisciplinary approaches exploring the intersection of these or other disciplinary perspectives.
Submission of abstracts
The Wayeb Conference Board invites the submission of abstracts concerning the conference theme Agency in Mesoamerica presented above under the headline Call for Papers. Submissions from a variety of perspectives and sub-disciplines of Maya and Mesoamerican Studies are encouraged. Presentations in English and Spanish will be accepted.
Contributions of authors who submit more than one abstract including co-authored papers will not be considered and co-authorship needs to be indicated upon submission.
Please submit your abstract here...
For the review process, the abstracts will be forwarded without the author’s particulars to an anonymous Review Committee that will be selected by the Wayeb Conference Board. Therefore, it is imperative that abstracts are ONLY submitted via the link indicated above. Submissions may not be made to conference organisers nor any other members of Wayeb. Submissions sent to any other address than the above will be immediately disqualified.
The deadline for submission of proposals for oral presentations and posters is Tuesday 31st March 2026 – final and non-extendable. Proposals must include the following: title, author(s), e-mail contact, abstract (max. 250 words), keywords, and preferred format (oral presentation or poster). Results will be announced during the first week of May 2026. Only complete submissions received by 23:59 CET on 31st March 2026 will be considered.
For more information, please contact the Wayeb Conference Board ConferenceBoard@wayeb.org