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International Association for Presocratic Studies
Seventh Biennial Conference: 15-19 July 2020

Belo Horizonte, Brazil: Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais
Chair of Organizing Committee: Miriam Peixoto

The International Association for Presocratic Studies (IAPS, founded in 2008: https://www.presocraticstudies.org) announces its Seventh Biennial Conference. The meeting will take place at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil 15-19 June 2020 (http://www.ufmg.br).
IAPS understands “Presocratics” to be the figures for whom either fragments of their work or relevant testimonia are collected in Hermann Diels’ Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (6th edn. 1951, edited by Walther Kranz). IAPS welcomes presentations on philosophical, philological, textual, doxographical, scientific, historical, literary and religious topics having to do with the Presocratics, on connections between Presocratic thought and other figures (e.g., the Sophists) and other areas of intellectual activity (e.g., mathematics, medicine or music), and on the reception of Presocratic thought in antiquity and later times.
IAPS welcomes participation from scholars at all stages of their careers, from graduate students to senior figures in the field.
To receive further information about the conference, please send a message with the title “IAPS 7” to Prof. Miriam Peixoto <presocraticstudies@gmail.com>.
Information about the venue can be found at our site: http://www.presocraticstudies.org

Call for abstracts


Two-page proposals for papers, in the form of abstracts (maximum 300 words) should be sent in PDF format to:
presocraticstudies@gmail.com
The title line of the message should be “IAPS 7 Proposal”
The first page of the proposal should be a cover page containing the following information:
Author’s name (as you would like it to appear in the program)
Author’s institution
Author’s title or position (e.g., Graduate Student, Independent Scholar, Associate Professor)
Author’s City/Country
Title of Paper
Author’s e-mail address
Modalities of session:
( ) Longer Plenary (30' for presentation; 15' for discussion)
( ) Short Plenary (20' for presentation; 10' for discussion)
( ) Discussion session (45' for discussion)

The second page should contain the abstract and the title of paper, in any of these languages: English, French, Germany, Italian, Portuguese or Spanish.
To ensure anonymity in the refereeing process, do not put your name on this page.
Authors of proposals are asked to observe two deadlines:
(i) Submission of abstracts: December 15, 2019.
(ii) Submission of full copy of paper (after acceptance of proposal), May 15, 2020
Submitted abstracts will be reviewed by a program committee appointed by the Council of IAPS. The decision of the program committee will be communicated via e-mail to authors of abstracts not later than 31 January 2020. Authors whose proposals have been accepted will receive an official invitation to present a paper at the conference.

• Papers may be written in English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese or Spanish.
• For papers written in languages other than English, it is recommended that a full English version be prepared by the author in time for distribution to the audience at the conference.
• If the paper contains untransliterated Greek, a Unicode font should be used.
• Maximum length of the full copy of the paper is 3,000 words, exclusive of footnotes and bibliography.

Conference Fee


Payment of a fee will be required for those who attend the conference. The exact amount will be determined instead of defined.

Presentation of Papers

In accordance with the established practice of IAPS, there will be two kinds of sessions: plenary sessions and discussion sessions.

Plenary sessions will conform to the usual practice for conferences: authors will read their papers, and there will be a brief period for questions and answers:
Shortest plenary session: 20 minutes to the reading of each paper and 10 minutes to discussion;
Longer plenary session: 30 minutes to the reading of each paper and 15 minutes to discussion.

The discussion sessions will take place in open areas at the conference center. At each session each of the presenters will sit in an assigned place, where his/her abstract has been posted, and discuss his/her paper with whoever comes to talk about it. The audience will be free to come and go as they wish, to discuss with as many or as few of the presenters as they wish, and to spend as much time as they wish with each presenter. The discussion sessions are intended for authors who prefer more extensive discussion of their work and/or for topics that would be most fruitfully discussed in such a setting. Proposals for collaborative presentations are welcome. Discussion sessions will be the duration of one or two hours.

At the time of submission of abstracts, authors will be given the opportunity to express their preference for presenting at either a plenary session or a discussion session. While taking such preference into account, the IAPS program committee will have the final say on assignment of the accepted presentation to either type of venue.

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(Photo: "Handwritten" by A. Birkan, licensed under CC BY 2.0)