PSIRU are calling for submissions to participate in the 28th Annual Conference of the Association for Heterodox Economics at University of Coimbra, Portugal, from 1-3 July 2026.
Stream: Concretely Utopian Public Services: Practice to theory, theory to practice
Stream co-ordinators: Emanuele Lobina, Nuno Martins,** Julia Bacchieri Indiani,* and Conor Gray*
* Public Services International Research Unit, Greenwich Business School, University of Greenwich, UK (for queries, please contact: e.lobina@gre.ac.uk)
** Católica Porto Business School, Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Portugal
This stream explores the emancipatory potential of concretely utopian public services (CUPS) across sectors. Margaret Archer’s concrete utopias are ideas of universal emancipatory development that guide actual practice in quest for the good life, including ideas of socio-ecological and economic justice and deep sustainable development. The pursuit of CUPS is particularly urgent in the era of zombie neoliberalism, where policies like privatisation and financialisation are being reproduced in the Global North and South despite their repeated failure to prioritise community needs.
We invite papers that engage with the challenges and opportunities of building alternatives to the neoliberal governance of public services (or otherwise contribute to understanding the developmental potential of such alternatives). These alternatives may include but are not limited to the following:
– Institutional preservation of Tony Lawson’s “eudaimonic bubbles”;
– Mobilising for Quality Public Services;
– Democratising governance;
– In-house restructuring of public enterprises;
– Public-public partnerships and labour-management partnerships for capacity development;
– Reverse privatisation/de-privatisation and remunicipalisation;
– Public ownership for decarbonisation;
– Pragmatic cost recovery; and,
– De-financialisation.
We will prioritise papers that show analytical rigour and a commitment to collective emancipation. Other important selection criteria are interdisciplinarity and a commitment to the co-construction of knowledge. We particularly welcome contributions from intellectual-activists, activist-intellectuals and collaborations between the two.
In the interest of a vibrant conversation, we also invite papers written in a variety of heterodox traditions, that engage with the political economy of CUPS. Here, political economy should be intended as embracing all social science disciplines allied in the critical understanding and development of economics. In the same spirit, we are open to contributions to the following:
– Conceptualisation of CUPS;
– Substantive theories of the institutional alternatives to the neoliberal governance of public services;
– Methodological innovations (including and beyond critical realist modelling); and,
– Empirical analysis of institutional pathways to and experiences with CUPS (irrespective of the methods deployed).
To submit papers and panels under this stream, please see here: Call for Papers and Panels for the 28th Annual Conference of the Association for Heterodox Economics (AHE) – Association for Heterodox Economics