AERA Division F – 2026 Annual Meeting Call for Proposals

Division F: History and Historiography

Program chair: Camika Royal

The Division F Program Committee invites submissions addressing all periods and topics related to historical inquiry in education, especially those that look back to look forward, employing historical frameworks and revisiting historiographies.

In keeping with the 2026 AERA program theme, “Unforgetting Histories and Imagining Futures: Constructing a New Vision for Education Research,” we welcome submissions that use historical analysis to reshape current understandings of the past to help explain the present and freedom dream for our future, to inform changemaking and coalition building through community-based organizing, and to engage with public-facing projects that use history to build a more inclusive and justice-centered present.

Division F welcomes innovative formats for research presentations. We also seek submissions that incorporate new strategies, media, and other formats of public scholarship into the 2026 Annual Meeting, as well as submissions that will draw interest both within Division F and beyond. Projects that address the current challenges in schools, schooling, and school systems are encouraged.

We are particularly interested in responding to this year’s call to action that asks us to “put histories of social movements, grassroots organizing, and innovation in the name of education in conversation with our various disciplines as we seek to find solutions to enduring problems in the field.” Such research is critical to the urgent need, given “our deeply divided social and political terrain—both nationally and globally.”

In recognition of this call, Division F challenge scholars and practitioners to interrogate linkages between education research, political moments, and public policy; examine how current policy aims to concretize collective forgetting; enrich our understanding of past power dynamics and historic social movements that serve as prologue for now; and use innovative theoretical frameworks that transcend traditional disciplinary boundaries. We seek studies on the history of Black, Asian American, Latina/o/x, Pacific Islander, Native American, and LGBTQ+ education, as well as investigations of the education of contemporary immigrant groups, the working classes, and intersectional analyses. We also look for historical and comparative studies on topics such as colonial education, Indigenous education, civic education, sexuality and gender in education, rural education, urban education, suburban education, religion and education, education and state formation, education and the law, teachers’ work, curriculum and instruction, and community-based education.

Submissions should clearly identify the historical sources on which the study is based and discuss the paper’s larger significance within the historiography and/or scholarly literature of the topic and/or period.

Note. All paper and session submissions—including symposia—must be submitted without author identification to allow for anonymized review. In the case of session submissions, all participants must be deidentified. Submissions that are not deidentified will be removed from consideration.

Questions related to the Division F call for submissions and review process can be sent to the program chair: Camika Royal, camika.royal@morgan.edu

We look forward to receiving your submissions and to working with you as a presenter, discussant, or chair.

We look forward to your submissions and working with you as a presenter, discussant, or chair.