A global conversation about the politics of land and resource struggles in an era of global and local crises

7-9 October 2025
University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, South Africa

PLAAS is pleased to announce our upcoming international conference on Land, Life and Society.

Building on the successful collaboration in last year’s Annual Conference, the IoS Fair Transitions Platform (UU) and LANDac are pleased to launch this Call for a second joint Conference, which will have a somewhat different set-up from what you are used to and end with a Summit. We welcome your suggestions for panel sessions and round tables for the first two days. Building on your input, we will conclude on the last day with an experiment of democracy – a more-than human Summit. There will be limited hybrid options for participation in the Conference and the Summit.

NOTICE OF CONFERENCE POSTPONEMENT

The spread of COVID-19 in South Africa and other countries in the region has again brought to the fore the fact that very dense, under-serviced, mostly informal, settlements are not healthy places to live. They are also places where the spread of a disease is difficult to prevent or manage. 

Join us for the Land Rights and COVID-19 webinar and discussion series, which is presented by Land Portal, Landesa, the Global Protection Cluster HLP AOR and GIZ, with organizing support from Environmental Peacebuilding Association, LANDac, New America and the UK's Department for International Development (DFID). 

Join us for the Land Rights and COVID-19 webinar and discussion series, which is presented by Land Portal, Landesa, the Global Protection Cluster HLP AOR and GIZ, with organizing support from Environmental Peacebuilding Association, LANDac, New America and the UK's Department for International Development (DFID). 

Post-war societies not only have to deal with continuing unpeaceful relations but also land-related conflict legacies, farmland and forest degradation, heavily exploited natural resources, land mines, a destroyed infrastructure, as well as returning refugees and ex-combatants. In the aftermath of war, access to and control of land often remains a sensitive issue which may precipitate tensions and lead to a renewed destabilization of volatile post-conflict situations.

​The Land & Accountability Research Centre (LARC) at the University of Cape Town commissioned the vivid documentary film This Land as a way for rural people to bring the untold story of their struggle for rights and accountability on communal land into urban forums of legislative, political and corporate decision-making.

LANDac’s Annual International Conference 2018 will look at land investments through the lens of mobility. What are the implications of land based investments on the movements of people? And how have displacement and population movements contributed to new and contesting land claims?

Dr Björn Hoops (Groningen) and Dr Ernst Marais (Johannesburg) are organising an international conference, entitled “New perspectives on acquisitive prescription”. The University of Groningen, in collaboration with the University of Johannesburg, will host the event at Het Kasteel, Melkweg 1, in Groningen, The Netherlands, from 10-11 May 2018