Reimagining Futures, Reinventing Pasts: Classical Antiquity and the Making of Imagined Worlds

Annual Meeting of Postgraduates in the Reception of the Ancient World 2026

The call for papers is open.

Abstracts due: 15 June 2026

About the Conference

AMPRAW is an annual conference designed to bring together early-career researchers in the field of classical reception studies. The 2026 meeting will mark the fifteenth edition of the conference. Since 2011, AMPRAW aims to contribute to the growth of an international network of PhD students and early career scholars working on the reception of classical antiquity, as well as to strengthen relationships between emerging researchers and established academics.

AMPRAW 2026 will be held at the Faculty of “Artes Liberales”, University of Warsaw, in the milieu of the Centre for Studies on the Classical Tradition (OBTA), from Thursday 19 November to Saturday 21 November 2026.

We anticipate holding this conference in a hybrid format. We warmly encourage participants to attend in person in Warsaw, while also providing the possibility of remote participation for both speakers and audience members. We cannot guarantee funding to cover speakers’ expenses, however, there is no conference fee.

Conference Theme

Imagined Worlds

In a world increasingly oriented toward the future – marked by rapid change, uncertainty, and recurring crisis – classical antiquity remains a powerful resource for imagining and questioning possible worlds. Far from belonging solely to the past, ancient myths, philosophies, and narratives are repeatedly drawn on to articulate hopes and fears, and to envision alternative futures. Ancient thought itself often engaged in speculative reflection, developing ways of thinking about time, nature, and society, as well as the limits of human agency – approaches that continue to shape contemporary debates.

This conference invites early career researchers to explore how classical antiquity participates in the making of imagined worlds across different temporal directions: how it is reactivated in visions of the future, used to reinvent or contest the past, and how it helps to frame the present. Particular attention is given to speculative practices – utopian, dystopian, futuristic, or counterfactual – in which antiquity functions as a shared point of reference, a critical language, or a site of ideological struggle.

At the same time, receptions of antiquity are never neutral. They emerge within specific social, political, and cultural contexts, and often reflect contemporary concerns and power relations. By approaching antiquity as a historically situated and contested resource, the conference aims to foster interdisciplinary discussion on how ancient material is used and reworked in politics, science, art, and cultural imagination.

The conference welcomes contributions from scholars working worldwide in classics, classical reception studies, cultural studies, history, sociology, and the arts. We particularly encourage innovative and interdisciplinary approaches.