LANDac will be back in 2026, with a conference on the theme of Land, Conflict and Peace. This conference offers the opportunity to explore issues at the crossroads of land governance and peace, conflict, and humanitarian studies. It invites reflection on how war and its aftermath reshape our understanding of land governance and call for new, context-sensitive approaches. Such reflection is more urgent than ever: today, around 50 countries of the world are experiencing war or organized violence, affecting roughly one in six people worldwide. In the current context of myriad global and local conflicts, this important theme aims to encourage rich discussion between participants from academia, practitioners, and policy makers.
The relationship between land and conflict, and the ways in which conflict redefines land access and rights, are common themes for practitioners working in land governance, and have also been explored in academic debates across a number of fields. Both research and practice have increasingly linked underlying dynamics of structural (in)justice around land to conflict, and the topic remains as relevant as ever: new findings continue to emerge, while evolving factors such as climate change further complicate the relationships between people, land, and conflict. Political and economic exclusion are central to conflicts, and these can often manifest through claims to land. In turn, conflict can engender loss of land, due to displacement, land grabbing, and militarisation. The aftermath of war can equally be a time of land loss, or of frustrated efforts to regain land lost in conflict. While war-to-peace transitions can bring the hope to correct some of these wrongs, they also bring new problems, such as through overlapping land claims, land grabbing in the name of development and reconstruction, and continued political competition. Moreover, experience shows that if not addressed in emergency response and post-recovery efforts, land issues can contribute to exacerbate or relapse of conflicts.
This year’s LANDac Conference turns its attention to these intersections. Key questions that motivate the conference are: How can different land governance approaches strengthen land rights in conflict-affected and challenging environments? How can land governance interventions support recovery, peacebuilding, and justice? And how can we better understand land governance as part of the broader politics of land before, during, and after violent conflict?
This conference offers the opportunity to explore the crossroads of land governance with peace and conflict studies. It invites reflection on how war and its aftermath reshape our understanding of land governance. Such reflection is more urgent than ever: today, around 50 countries of the world are experiencing war or organised violence, affecting roughly one in six people worldwide. If current trends continue, two thirds of the world’s poor will live in conflict-affected or fragile countries by 2030.
To reflect on these challenges, this conference aims to bring together scholars, policy makers and practitioners from the land governance field on the one hand; and the conflict, peace, and humanitarian field on the other. We believe these two communities can speak to each other in very meaningful ways. Early work on land in humanitarian and peace building contexts (by Sara Pantuliano in 2009 and John Unruh in 2013) has put these issues on the agenda, and experiences from different war-affected countries indicate the complexity of land governance interventions in these settings, technically, legally, and politically.
Among the peace and conflict community, land remains somewhat underacknowledged as a critical theme. Here, the land governance community may help put urgent issues of injustice as well as structural violence relating to land on the international peacebuilding agenda. Precisely in situations of threatening violence, a pertinent question is what can be done through land governance. Vice-versa, the land governance community stands to benefit from insights and theory-building on key issues in conflict dynamics, including the mobilisation for violence, the role of identity politics, and the dynamics of state formation; but also what it takes to think of peace in terms of transformation and justice.
Conference Themes
Land at the ‘triple nexus’: humanitarianism, development, peace-building.
Many of the countries where land governance interventions unfold, are directly or indirectly affected by conflict, while addressing land-related conflict and contested land governance are critical aspects to enable the transition from war to peace. This raises many questions.
Suggested questions for this theme include: What lessons can be learned from cases where inadequate land governance in post-conflict contexts undermined peace and stability? To what extent should humanitarians and peacebuilders integrate land and its governance in their work? What are the specific challenges of managing land governance in protracted crises or fragile contexts? How are factors such as needs for transitional justice, reconstruction, dealing with broken social trust, or threats to state sovereignty, integrated into approaches to land governance in protracted crises and fragile contexts?
Everyday politics of conflict- and peacemaking around land
The role of land in peace and conflict often functions through the ‘everyday’ of people’s economic, political, and social reliance on land. This can, for example, relate to the role of land in competition over livelihoods, or the role that cooperative governance of land at a local-level can help to build social cohesion and trust in public authorities.
Suggested questions for this theme include: How do conflicts emerge from competition over livelihoods? What does the framing of these conflicts as ‘land rights’ conflicts do to the potential to resolve them? What roles do ‘outside’ actors take in exacerbating or reducing ‘everyday’ conflict dynamics? How do transformations in land governance serve as a starting point for wider transformations towards peace? How do these practices variously relate to top-down efforts at integrating land into peacebuilding projects?
People on the Move: Addressing Land Rights for Displaced, Refugees, Returnees and hosting communities
Conflict-related displacement can be seen both through a lens of land dispossession, while displacement-related shifts in land access and ownership can in turn exacerbate risks of post-conflict peacebuilding depending on how it is addressed.
Suggested questions for this theme include: What are the specific challenges of securing access to land for “people on the move” (IDPs, refugees, and returnees) and how does this intersect with the rights of hosting communities? How to protect land rights of ‘people on the move’ during and after conflict? What are the effects of this? What lessons can be taken from existing experiences with restitution?
Land, territory, and identity: how to understand land conflict
Often, the dynamics around land and conflict derive from and in turn build on historical problems of unequal land distribution and dispossession. Land conflict is also deeply entwined with contestation over identity, belonging, and citizenship.
Suggested questions for this theme include: How do historical claims, historical injustice, memory, and narratives of belonging shape contemporary land-related conflict? What analytical approaches best capture the complex relationship between land, memory, belonging, and violent conflict? How can gendered, ethnic, or generational dimensions of land access and conflict be integrated into conflict analysis?
Geopolitics and the dynamics of land dispossession
As much as land can be linked to peace and conflict in the ‘everyday’ of people in particular places, geopolitics has long been part of land and conflict. From territorial disputes to the role of the global financial crisis in the 2008 ‘land grabbing rush’ geopolitics plays a key role in the dynamics of land dispossession and conflict. In the current context of a shifting international order and the complexity of the climate crisis, geopolitics is at the heart of new dynamics of land dispossession.
Suggested questions for this theme include: How does geopolitical competition, as part of a new emerging international order, figure in new forms of territorial conflict and land dispossession? In the context of the green transition, what is the role of geopolitical competition in engendering new forms or new dynamics of land dispossession? How do violent and non-violent forms of resistance to this dispossession engender conflict?
Climate Shocks and Land Disputes: From Conflict Risks to (re)Negotiating Land Rights
In both policy and research, there is a great deal of attention to the role of climate shocks as a ‘risk multiplier’ or ‘threat amplifier’ for conflict. These debates have often included land rights, land degradation, and/or competition over land in their analysis of climate shock and conflict risk.
Suggested questions for this theme include: What are the linkages between climate shocks and escalating resource disputes, and how do these conflicts manifest? Who are the most impacted groups? How can changing landscapes be an opportunity for (re)negotiating rights? What approaches to this could appropriately center justice?
Call for sessions
We invite session proposals around the above six themes. The window for submitting session proposals is now open and closes on 19 January 2026. Session proposals must be submitted in English using the submission form which you can download here. Email the completed form to: Landac2026@gmail.com
Please note that we will only consider proposals using the format, indicating title, contact person, which of the themes the session relates to; what will be the format of the session; and if they open up to submission of abstracts or select all presenters themselves. As in previous editions of the conference, we welcome a variety of formats for sessions: paper presentations, panel discussions, round table
Session organisers, please note: even though we will offer some opportunity for online presentations, the session organiser commits to being physically present in Utrecht and taking responsibility for hosting the session.
Please note that this is a call for sessions. If your session proposal is accepted, you will be responsible for selecting the presenters. For a ‘closed session’ you need to organise your own presenters. For an ‘open session’ you are responsible for receiving, reading and selecting abstracts after the call for abstracts opens (end January). You will also be responsible for communicating with the abstract submitters on selection, presentation details, and other session-related questions. The organising committee will support you with guidelines for this.
Key dates
The conference takes place on 1 and 2 July 2026. An event for Early Career Researchers follows on 3 July.
The Call for sessions will close on 19 January 2026.Applicants will be informed on the acceptance of their session by 23 January 2026.
Accepted sessions will be published online and a subsequent call for abstracts will open on 26 January 2026 and close on 22 February 2026.Acceptance of papers will be communicated by 3 March 2026.
Registration will open in February 2026 and close at the end of June 2026.
Please note: Visa application procedures to the EU are lengthy. We strongly advise you to book an appointment well ahead of time.
As last year, the conference will be integrated into the LANDac Summer School hosted by Utrecht University Summer School. The LANDac Summer School will take place from 29 June to 10 July 2026. Summer School participation fees include full access to the conference. Registration for the Summer School will open soon.
Updates on the conference will be published on the LANDac website.
Organising committee
Gemma van der Haar (LANDac & WUR), Femke van Noorloos, Judith Verweijen (IDS-UU), Mathijs van Leeuwen (Radboud University), Bertus Wennink (KIT Institute), Caitlin Ryan (University of Groningen), Barbara Codispoti (Oxfam Novib), Bernardo Ribeiro de Almeida (Leiden University College & Van Vollenhoven Institute), Wytske Chamberlain.
LANDac Annual Conference 2026
Land, Conflict, and Peace
Utrecht, the Netherlands | 1-2 July conference, 3 July Early Career Researcher Event
Call for sessions now open! Extended to 19 January 2026.
LANDac will be back in 2026, with a conference on the theme of Land, Conflict and Peace. This conference offers the opportunity to explore issues at the crossroads of land governance and peace, conflict, and humanitarian studies. It invites reflection on how war and its aftermath reshape our understanding of land governance and call for new, context-sensitive approaches. Such reflection is more urgent than ever: today, around 50 countries of the world are experiencing war or organized violence, affecting roughly one in six people worldwide. In the current context of myriad global and local conflicts, this important theme aims to encourage rich discussion between participants from academia, practitioners, and policy makers.
Contents
Land in peace and conflict
The relationship between land and conflict, and the ways in which conflict redefines land access and rights, are common themes for practitioners working in land governance, and have also been explored in academic debates across a number of fields. Both research and practice have increasingly linked underlying dynamics of structural (in)justice around land to conflict, and the topic remains as relevant as ever: new findings continue to emerge, while evolving factors such as climate change further complicate the relationships between people, land, and conflict. Political and economic exclusion are central to conflicts, and these can often manifest through claims to land. In turn, conflict can engender loss of land, due to displacement, land grabbing, and militarisation. The aftermath of war can equally be a time of land loss, or of frustrated efforts to regain land lost in conflict. While war-to-peace transitions can bring the hope to correct some of these wrongs, they also bring new problems, such as through overlapping land claims, land grabbing in the name of development and reconstruction, and continued political competition. Moreover, experience shows that if not addressed in emergency response and post-recovery efforts, land issues can contribute to exacerbate or relapse of conflicts.
This year’s LANDac Conference turns its attention to these intersections. Key questions that motivate the conference are: How can different land governance approaches strengthen land rights in conflict-affected and challenging environments? How can land governance interventions support recovery, peacebuilding, and justice? And how can we better understand land governance as part of the broader politics of land before, during, and after violent conflict?
This conference offers the opportunity to explore the crossroads of land governance with peace and conflict studies. It invites reflection on how war and its aftermath reshape our understanding of land governance. Such reflection is more urgent than ever: today, around 50 countries of the world are experiencing war or organised violence, affecting roughly one in six people worldwide. If current trends continue, two thirds of the world’s poor will live in conflict-affected or fragile countries by 2030.
To reflect on these challenges, this conference aims to bring together scholars, policy makers and practitioners from the land governance field on the one hand; and the conflict, peace, and humanitarian field on the other. We believe these two communities can speak to each other in very meaningful ways. Early work on land in humanitarian and peace building contexts (by Sara Pantuliano in 2009 and John Unruh in 2013) has put these issues on the agenda, and experiences from different war-affected countries indicate the complexity of land governance interventions in these settings, technically, legally, and politically.
Among the peace and conflict community, land remains somewhat underacknowledged as a critical theme. Here, the land governance community may help put urgent issues of injustice as well as structural violence relating to land on the international peacebuilding agenda. Precisely in situations of threatening violence, a pertinent question is what can be done through land governance. Vice-versa, the land governance community stands to benefit from insights and theory-building on key issues in conflict dynamics, including the mobilisation for violence, the role of identity politics, and the dynamics of state formation; but also what it takes to think of peace in terms of transformation and justice.
Conference Themes
Many of the countries where land governance interventions unfold, are directly or indirectly affected by conflict, while addressing land-related conflict and contested land governance are critical aspects to enable the transition from war to peace. This raises many questions.
Suggested questions for this theme include: What lessons can be learned from cases where inadequate land governance in post-conflict contexts undermined peace and stability? To what extent should humanitarians and peacebuilders integrate land and its governance in their work? What are the specific challenges of managing land governance in protracted crises or fragile contexts? How are factors such as needs for transitional justice, reconstruction, dealing with broken social trust, or threats to state sovereignty, integrated into approaches to land governance in protracted crises and fragile contexts?
The role of land in peace and conflict often functions through the ‘everyday’ of people’s economic, political, and social reliance on land. This can, for example, relate to the role of land in competition over livelihoods, or the role that cooperative governance of land at a local-level can help to build social cohesion and trust in public authorities.
Suggested questions for this theme include: How do conflicts emerge from competition over livelihoods? What does the framing of these conflicts as ‘land rights’ conflicts do to the potential to resolve them? What roles do ‘outside’ actors take in exacerbating or reducing ‘everyday’ conflict dynamics? How do transformations in land governance serve as a starting point for wider transformations towards peace? How do these practices variously relate to top-down efforts at integrating land into peacebuilding projects?
Conflict-related displacement can be seen both through a lens of land dispossession, while displacement-related shifts in land access and ownership can in turn exacerbate risks of post-conflict peacebuilding depending on how it is addressed.
Suggested questions for this theme include: What are the specific challenges of securing access to land for “people on the move” (IDPs, refugees, and returnees) and how does this intersect with the rights of hosting communities? How to protect land rights of ‘people on the move’ during and after conflict? What are the effects of this? What lessons can be taken from existing experiences with restitution?
Often, the dynamics around land and conflict derive from and in turn build on historical problems of unequal land distribution and dispossession. Land conflict is also deeply entwined with contestation over identity, belonging, and citizenship.
Suggested questions for this theme include: How do historical claims, historical injustice, memory, and narratives of belonging shape contemporary land-related conflict? What analytical approaches best capture the complex relationship between land, memory, belonging, and violent conflict? How can gendered, ethnic, or generational dimensions of land access and conflict be integrated into conflict analysis?
As much as land can be linked to peace and conflict in the ‘everyday’ of people in particular places, geopolitics has long been part of land and conflict. From territorial disputes to the role of the global financial crisis in the 2008 ‘land grabbing rush’ geopolitics plays a key role in the dynamics of land dispossession and conflict. In the current context of a shifting international order and the complexity of the climate crisis, geopolitics is at the heart of new dynamics of land dispossession.
Suggested questions for this theme include: How does geopolitical competition, as part of a new emerging international order, figure in new forms of territorial conflict and land dispossession? In the context of the green transition, what is the role of geopolitical competition in engendering new forms or new dynamics of land dispossession? How do violent and non-violent forms of resistance to this dispossession engender conflict?
In both policy and research, there is a great deal of attention to the role of climate shocks as a ‘risk multiplier’ or ‘threat amplifier’ for conflict. These debates have often included land rights, land degradation, and/or competition over land in their analysis of climate shock and conflict risk.
Suggested questions for this theme include: What are the linkages between climate shocks and escalating resource disputes, and how do these conflicts manifest? Who are the most impacted groups? How can changing landscapes be an opportunity for (re)negotiating rights? What approaches to this could appropriately center justice?
Call for sessions
We invite session proposals around the above six themes. The window for submitting session proposals is now open and closes on 19 January 2026. Session proposals must be submitted in English using the submission form which you can download here. Email the completed form to: Landac2026@gmail.com
Please note that we will only consider proposals using the format, indicating title, contact person, which of the themes the session relates to; what will be the format of the session; and if they open up to submission of abstracts or select all presenters themselves. As in previous editions of the conference, we welcome a variety of formats for sessions: paper presentations, panel discussions, round table
Session organisers, please note: even though we will offer some opportunity for online presentations, the session organiser commits to being physically present in Utrecht and taking responsibility for hosting the session.
Please note that this is a call for sessions. If your session proposal is accepted, you will be responsible for selecting the presenters. For a ‘closed session’ you need to organise your own presenters. For an ‘open session’ you are responsible for receiving, reading and selecting abstracts after the call for abstracts opens (end January). You will also be responsible for communicating with the abstract submitters on selection, presentation details, and other session-related questions. The organising committee will support you with guidelines for this.
Key dates
The conference takes place on 1 and 2 July 2026. An event for Early Career Researchers follows on 3 July.
The Call for sessions will close on 19 January 2026. Applicants will be informed on the acceptance of their session by 23 January 2026.
Accepted sessions will be published online and a subsequent call for abstracts will open on 26 January 2026 and close on 22 February 2026. Acceptance of papers will be communicated by 3 March 2026.
Registration will open in February 2026 and close at the end of June 2026.
Please note: Visa application procedures to the EU are lengthy. We strongly advise you to book an appointment well ahead of time.
As last year, the conference will be integrated into the LANDac Summer School hosted by Utrecht University Summer School. The LANDac Summer School will take place from 29 June to 10 July 2026. Summer School participation fees include full access to the conference. Registration for the Summer School will open soon.
Contact
Contact the conference organisers by email: landac2026@gmail.com
Updates on the conference will be published on the LANDac website.
Organising committee
Gemma van der Haar (LANDac & WUR), Femke van Noorloos, Judith Verweijen (IDS-UU), Mathijs van Leeuwen (Radboud University), Bertus Wennink (KIT Institute), Caitlin Ryan (University of Groningen), Barbara Codispoti (Oxfam Novib), Bernardo Ribeiro de Almeida (Leiden University College & Van Vollenhoven Institute), Wytske Chamberlain.
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