Concept Note

International Conference on

“Youth Narratives and Cultural Practices Across the Globe in the 20th and 21st Century”

Concept Note

The 20th and 21st centuries have witnessed profound social, political, cultural, and technological transformations that have reshaped the lives, identities, and aspirations of young people around the world. Youth—often positioned at the forefront of social change—have played pivotal roles as cultural producers, political actors, critics of power, agents of resistance, and creative innovators. Their experiences and expressions, shaped by specific historical and regional contexts, offer critical insights into the broader social worlds they inhabit.

This international conference, “Youth Narratives and Cultural Practices across the globe in the 20th and 21st Century,” seeks to bring together scholars, researchers, artists, and practitioners to explore the multifaceted ways in which youth cultures are formed, negotiated, represented, and transformed in a global framework. The event aims to create an interdisciplinary platform for examining student movements, youth identities, digital cultures, political activism, media representations, artistic expressions, and the dynamic relationship between young people and the socio-political structures that surround them.

Youth have historically been at the center of global socio-political shifts. From anticolonial struggles and civil rights movements to feminist mobilizations, environmental protests, and digital activism, young people have continuously reshaped the public sphere. Universities, campuses, and urban cultural spaces have emerged as vibrant sites of political engagement and spaces where new forms of cultural production flourish.

In recent decades, the rapid expansion of digital technologies and social media has further transformed youth cultures. The digital sphere is not only a medium of communication but a site of identity construction, political participation, aesthetic innovation, and transnational dialogue. Movements such as the Arab Spring, Black Lives Matter, Ni Una Menos, Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement, and climate activism led by young people illustrate how digital tools enable new modes of mobilization and storytelling.

Culture being an expression of lived experience can provide a greater understanding into these questions. Culture can explain how these “youth” define themselves or how they mobilise. Culture exists in socio-economic history and political contexts. Culture may provide a holistic picture of youth as agents, or symbols, of resistance emerging from and acting in respective contexts. It is important to unravel the trends of youth given their centrality to greater structural and value-based systems.

Simultaneously, youth cultures intersect deeply with popular culture—cinema, music, literature, sports, and fashion all offer channels through which young people articulate desire, rebellion, anxiety, hope, and belonging. These cultural practices reflect generational tensions and negotiate the complexities of globalization, consumerism, migration, precarity, and new forms of subjectivity.

Culture leaves a legacy, a history, makes interventions in social life and acts as a point of reference. How culture is created matters on who constitutes and does not constitute the youth. Who then are these “youth”? When do they decide to come together to form the “youth”? How do they reconcile their other social belongings with their “youth” belonging?

Despite their global visibility, youth cultures are not homogeneous. They are mediated by language, class, gender, caste, race, ethnicity, and region. Understanding youth experiences therefore, requires a comparative, intersectional, and interdisciplinary lens. The proposed conference aims to foster such conversations.

Objectives

1.    To examine youth narratives as forms of cultural expression and political articulation across different historical and geographical contexts.

2.    To analyze student movements, youth activism, and generational politics in the 20^th and 21st centuries, highlighting linkages between local struggles and global currents.

3.    To explore the role of media—cinema, music, literature, social media, and popular culture—in shaping youth identities and influencing public discourse.

4.    To investigate emerging digital and transnational youth cultures, with attention to online activism, virtual communities, and digital storytelling.

5.    To facilitate dialogue between scholars, artists, and practitioners whose work engages with youth culture from varied disciplinary perspectives.

6.    To create a comparative framework connecting youth cultures in Asia, Europe, Africa, the Americas, and other global regions, emphasizing similarities, differences, and shared challenges.

Significance of the Conference

This conference emerges at a time when debates around youth agency, political participation, and cultural expression have gained renewed urgency. Around the world, young people are grappling with unprecedented challenges—economic precarity, ecological crises, ideological polarization, technological disruptions, and socio-cultural anxieties—while simultaneously generating innovative responses to these challenges.

By situating youth at the fulcrum of academic inquiry, this conference will contribute to expanding scholarly understanding of how young people not only experience but actively shape contemporary histories. This focus is particularly timely given the growing academic attention on student politics, digital activism, and global youth solidarities across regions such as South Asia, Latin America, Europe, and North America.

For institutions and researchers, the conference will provide:

•     an opportunity to build international networks and research collaborations,
•        a platform for emerging scholars and students to present work,
•        a space to exchange methodologies, theoretical approaches, and comparative framework related to youth studies.

Expected Outcomes

1.    Deepened interdisciplinary understanding of youth cultures and political practices globally.

2.    Publication of selected papers in the form of an edited volume or journal special issue.

3.    Strengthening academic networks across continents, especially between institutions in India, Latin America, Europe, and North America.

4.    Enhanced research directions for ongoing projects on student movements and youth cultures.

5.    Cross-pollination between academic scholarship and cultural practice, potentially involving film screenings, music sessions, or youth art exhibitions alongside academic panels.

The conference on “Youth Narratives and Cultural Practices Across the Globe in the 20th and 21st Century” aims to establish a rigorous, inclusive, and globally oriented academic conversation on youth. By bringing together diverse voices, the conference seeks to illuminate the complexities of youth life and generate new intellectual pathways for understanding how young people transform culture, politics, and society.

Tentative Sub-themes

1.       Youth and Politics

2.       Youth and Literature

3.       Youth and Cinema

4.       Youth and Music

5.       Youth and Social/Digital Media

6.       Youth and Alternative Expressions