The Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade, invites you to the hybrid symposium Concepts that Matter: Sustainability and Democracy, to be held on Friday, 23 October 2026, from 9:00 to 18:00, at the Institute, Kraljice Natalije 45, and online.

Most of us agree that sustainability and democracy are crucial civic values. But do we agree on what they actually mean? This question lies at the heart of Debating Democracy, an Erasmus+ Partnership for Cooperation in Higher Education bringing together the universities of Agder, Belgrade, Oslo, Paris Cité and Perugia. Within the project, postgraduate students have been trained in corpus-based critical discourse analysis using the SHE corpus, a large specialised collection of texts that makes it possible to trace how sustainability, democracy and related concepts are used across a range of discourses.

At the symposium, students will present their pilot projects. Topics range from controversies over lithium mining in Serbia and the linguistic representation of violence against women in Italy to the concept of biodiversity and questions of self-determination and cultural resilience in Sami political discourse. The opening talks will be given by Gabriela Saldanha Viva and Jan Buts, also from the University of Oslo, who will discuss why and how to debate key concepts with the help of corpora.

The symposium offers an opportunity to explore how researchers can take a more critical, evidence-based approach to concepts we tend to take for granted, and to discuss them in an interdisciplinary setting. The event will be held in English, and online participation requires prior registration.