The Art of mediation: Intercultural mediation throughout history.

This year’s ICSAH meeting aims to explore the Art of Mediation as a lens through which cross cultural interaction in history can be examined and better understood. Throughout history, individuals, institutions, communities, and cultural forms such as artworks, performances, or language have played essential roles in mediating between cultures. Whether navigating religious differences, political conflicts, trade rivalries, or artistic innovations, these mediators shaped the shared spaces where civilisations met and interacted.
We invite scholars and practitioners to explore the many forms and functions of intercultural mediation in the past and present. From royal marriages and diplomatic missions to multilingual performances and artistic hybridities, we aim to shed light on the human and cultural mechanisms that enabled communication, negotiation, and coexistence across boundaries. We particularly welcome contributions that analyse how contact across languages, belief systems, and political structures was facilitated and made meaningful through a mediating agent - individual, institutional, or material - and how the legacies of such encounters continue to shape our world today.

9th International Conference on Arts and Humanities.

The Art of Mediation: Cross-Cultural Dialogue in History and the Humanities.

Marietta-Blau Saal, University of Vienna, Universitätsring 1, 1010, Vienna, Austria

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

-Diplomacy and politics: the dynamic role of envoys, governors, merchants, legal practitioners, or local intermediaries in navigating intercultural conflicts and negotiations.
-Mobility, migration, and exile: individuals as cultural bridges within diasporas, exile communities, port cities, frontier zones, or trade hubs.
-Religion and religious practices: the intermediary role of actors, experiences, texts, and beliefs in encounters across confessional or doctrinal boundaries.
-Gender studies: women as mediators in processes of negotiation, reconciliation, or cultural translation.
-Art and cultural production: the role of artistic creation in bridging cultures; literary reinterpretations and visual media as mediating forces; the translation and transformation of myths, symbols, and values.
-Historiography and perception: how mediators have been remembered, forgotten, or re-imagined and how acts of mediation are portrayed in literature, film, philosophy, or media.

Submission rules: To submit a proposal for a paper of approximately 20 minutes or a poster, please send an abstract of 350 words or less by April 30th, 2026 to icsahcy1gmail.com or francesca.cecicomune.roma.it. The proposed contributions should not have been previously published or accepted for publication elsewhere. Abstracts should include a title, a summary of the presentation, name of the author/s, institutional affiliation and email. Publication. Accepted papers will be published in the conference proceedings, which follow an editorial (but not a peer-review) process.

Conference languages: German, English, French, Italian, Spanish.
Conference fee: 50€
Conference fee exemption: Students and staff of the University of Vienna will not be required to pay the conference fee.

Please address any further inquiries to:
Prof. Umberto Mondini, icsahcy1gmail.com,
Dr. Francesca Ceci, francesca.cecicomune.roma.it, or
Dr. Alina Dimitrova, alina.dimitrovaunivie.ac.at