About ThemaTalkers

ThemaTalkers are an academic collective at the University of Bremen consisting of teaching staff and students. The collective emerged from a master's seminar in which a conference was held on the topic How much society is there in the topic?. Inspired by the first conference, the collective gave itself its name – ThemaTalkers.

Since then, ThemaTalkers has organised an annual interdisciplinary, hybrid student conference. The focus continues to be on linguistic issues. ThemaTalkers is currently hosted by Hanna Acke (?bo Akademi), Lara Herford (University of Bremen) and Ingo H. Warnke (University of Bremen). Cooperation partners are ?bo Akademi, the University of Vienna and the University of Bremen's joint research platform Worlds of Contradiction (WOC), as well as the international research network European Research Network on Discourses of Marginality and Demarginalization (DeMarg). The institutional anchoring results in thematic overlaps and points of contact.

Speaking at the conference

This year's conference, Anti/Queer Discourses: How is queer socially negotiated?, will take place on 27 and 28 June 2025 and is aimed at advanced Bachelor's and Master's students. Student conferences are organised by students for students.

This gives students the opportunity to present their own research findings in a protected environment and gain a first impression of everyday academic life. In addition, the networking opportunities offer valuable chances to make contacts.

Would you like to participate with your own presentation? The ThemaTalkers look forward to receiving your application! Both short presentations (15 minutes) and longer lectures (30 minutes) can be submitted. Creative formats such as essayistic contributions or short films are also welcome.

The application deadline is 15 April 2025.

Further details on how to apply can be found in the Call for Papers (CfP). A CfP is the official call for applications for conferences. In addition to presenting the topic, CfPs also contain organisational information. The CfP for the conference in June can be found on the ThemaTalkers website. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact ThemaTalkers at any time.

Co-organising the conference

In the seminar Design, Planning and Implementation of a Student Conference, students plan the conference together under the guidance of Bremen lecturers Lara Herford and Ingo H. Warnke. From finding topics and writing the call for papers to promoting the conference (creating posters, etc.) and organising the conference days (e.g. creating the programme and moderating), as well as jointly editing an anthology – a work in which the texts on the lecture topics are published in a collection – all tasks are completed by the students either together or in small groups.

The seminar is organised in a low-threshold manner and focuses on participation and flexibility: tasks are distributed according to interest and capacity. This allows each topic speaker to identify their personal strengths and interests. Since the workload varies depending on the phase, there is no fixed weekly schedule. Instead, we meet as needed: sometimes just briefly every two weeks via Zoom, sometimes for longer sessions, some of which take place on site – for example, to create the programme. This leaves enough room to fit the seminar around your studies, job or other commitments.

You can join the seminar at any time. For example, you could become a topic speaker for the 2025 summer semester (10-M79-E Praxis-1 on Stud.IP). The status for the 2025 summer semester is as follows: Now that the topic and the call for papers for the June 2025 conference have been finalised, the applications will be reviewed in the coming weeks, the conference programme will be drawn up and the event will be advertised, e.g. via social media. There will also be many tasks to do during the conference in June, such as looking after the technical equipment. Work on the anthology in which the conference contributions will be published is not expected to begin until the winter semester 2025/26, as the speakers will have until the end of the year to write their contributions.

Overall, participating in the project as a ThemaTalker is not only an opportunity to complete elective modules or earn extra credit points for your transcript: You will gain insights into peer review processes (a procedure in which academic work, such as articles or conference papers, is reviewed by other experts (‘peers’)), learn how to evaluate applications for presentations, edit papers and take on many other tasks at conferences – all of which will give you a comprehensive insight into part of academic practice. In addition, you will gain a first impression of the work of an editor and develop a better understanding of the editorial process.

Even if you decide not to pursue an academic career, you can transfer the project management and organisational skills you have learned to many other areas, thereby broadening your career prospects.

Further information – including the current call for papers – can be found on the ThemaTalkers website (/thematalkers).

Mail: themtalkprotect me ?!uni-bremenprotect me ?!.de

Course number of the seminar in summer semester 2025: 10-M79-E Praxis-1