In keeping with its strategy, the Academia Europaea Bucharest Hub works closely with major international institutions and academic networks. Thus, on 1-4 July 2027, the Hub hosted, with the assistance of many partners and sponsors, the 26th annual conference of the Utopian Studies Society / Europe (USS/E). Its main theme was The Pasts and Futures of Utopia, and it gathered 130 participants (18 online) from 25 countries. Over 150 people had expressed their intention to attend the event. But money, health issues, bureaucracies, borders, and wars worked against them. This is why, in order to better document the diversity of the current utopian studies scene, the Book of Abstracts includes all the approved submissions.
This was the ‘second coming’ of the plan to hold the annual USS/E conference in Bucharest. In 2020, the pandemic made it impossible to meet in person, and an online conference with over 100 participants seemed absurd. The XIVth International Congress of Sociology, planned for Bucharest and fully prepared (including the volumes collecting the papers) in 1939 was postponed for 1940 due to the outbreak of WWII and did not have a second chance.
Our event included almost 30 special sessions and panels, as well as several plenary sessions, and ended with a day trip to Peleș, Pelișor, and Bran castles. The latter, associated with the myth of Dracula (for all the wrong reasons), is currently becoming the site of a possible synchretism with the myth of Elvis, after being bought by the owners of Graceland. As David Coates suggested, the icon of Elvis with fangs could well promote its global (after)life.
Publications based on the proceedings are being prepared, and a series of high-level smaller conferences on Utopia will be starting at Bucharest Hub Days 2027.
More details on the conference, including its final programme and the book of abstracts, at The Pasts and Futures of Utopia (1-4 July 2026) – Academia Europaea.
