BLRN : Call for papers « Rush to soil and subsoil: sharing analysis »

« Rush to soil and subsoil: sharing analysis » , **2^nd workshop of the Belgian Land Research Network (BLRN)***

Université catholique de Louvain — June 5, 2014

*Call for papers: *

Throughout Belgium, a considerable number of individual researchers and research institutes work on issues of land access and control in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Too often, however, exchange of ideas and debates between these different researchers in Belgium has been limited. For this reason, a group of researchers from UCL and Ghent University established the *Belgian Land Research Network (BLRN) *in 2013*. *The BLRN aims to act as a platform for social science research on land related issues conducted at Belgian universities. It intends to become a focal point of discussion and debate for research on land related themes, including control and conflict over natural resources including mining and gas, legal pluralism and land access, agrarian reforms, food security, dispossession and agricultural change, land grabbing, and other related issues. Secondly, the BLRN intends to act as a platform between the academic world and the non-academic world of development practitioners, policy-makers, NGO workers and other interested parties. The BLRN therefore aims to build bridges between the two worlds of academic researchers and development practitioners through the organization of workshops, briefings and other events on various land-related issues.

The *second workshop*, aims to consider the process, impact and consequences of the extractive boom and land rush now observed around the world. At present, actors in the extractive sector are acquiring and exploiting a growing stock of increasingly hard to get at resources beneath the land: minerals, petroleum, natural gas, and water. As a result, overlapping uses generate numerous conflicts, putting to the fore conflicting visions of land use and development.

The workshop will develop an *overview of debate and recent research* at Belgian Universities on land access, agricultural change, extractive policies, human rights and conflict. We would like to focus on the overlapping and competing land use interests of actors involved in investing and transforming rural landscapes.We welcome presentations highlighting the heterogeneity of actors and stakes at play. We will also try to incorporate approaches and research tools implemented in studies of land use and extractive industries. The workshop will provide space for NGO and development workers to participate to the debate.

This second workshop of the BLRN will be organized on *June 5, 2014 *(8.45-18)*at UCL* (Université catholique de Louvain, in Louvain-la-Neuve, place Montesquieu, 1, LECL 93). Research contributions are welcome from Belgian universities, as well as those abroad.

*Deadline for abstracts*(max 500 words) and NGO interest to participate to the final panel: *March 30, 2014*.
Each presenter will have 15 to 20 minutes. Communication can be in French, Dutch or English (English encouraged).
Abstracts can be sent to Emmanuelle.piccoli@uclouvain.be <mailto:Emmanuelle.piccoli@uclouvain.be>