Submissions are now open for Knowledge Beyond Boundaries, LSE’s annual interdisciplinary student research conference, taking place as part of the LSE Festival on Wednesday 17 June 2026.
Knowledge Beyond Boundaries is open to all current and recent alumni undergradaute and taught master’s students at LSE, as well as students from CIVICA partner universities around Europe.
This is a chance to showcase your investigation, research and communication skills, and to gain valuable presentation experience while networking with students from outside your own degree programme.
Find out more about submitting your abstract here.
Theme
This year's conference embraces the 2026 Festival theme: How to Save the Planet.
Saving the planet is not only about the environment. It means asking what kind of world we want to build and what stands in the way. That question runs across the social sciences: from gender justice to economic inequality, from AI ethics to the politics of migration, from healthcare systems under strain to the future of democracy, education, and public institutions.
Whether your research addresses the climate crisis, conflict, digital technologies, or any of the countless other forces reshaping how societies function, this conference wants to hear from you.
The best social science research is concerned with saving the planet by diagnosing what's broken, imagining what's possible, and investigating the systems, structures, and ideas that shape people's lives.
Your research
This conference is the ideal forum for you to interrogate how we approach research questions, create and disseminate knowledge, and break down barriers between disciplines.
It aims to provide a friendly, inclusive space for sharing student research from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, with an emphasis on projects that cross disciplinary boundaries, challenge existing paradigms, and apply new approaches and methods to re-envision what social science research looks like.
You can:
- Share work you’ve completed as part of your degree programme
- Try out new ideas in front of a diverse audience
- Collaborate with other students to investigate a research question together
Here, research means any scholarly work – it may be informative, critical, or creative. Works in progress are very much encouraged – the conference will be an opportunity to gather useful feedback as you develop your project.
Submissions will be organised into themed panels with a range of perspectives, approaches, and ideas represented. You can submit on any social science topic and collaborative submissions are highly encouraged, especially those which bring together researchers with different disciplinary expertise.
Submit your abstract
All LSE undergraduates, taught master’s students, recent LSE alumni, and current CIVICA students are invited to submit an abstract for this year’s conference.
You can submit an abstract to present a paper, poster, creative show and tell, or performance, either as an individual or part of a collaboration.
Abstracts will be reviewed by a panel of LSE academics and those accepted will be invited to participate in the conference, taking place on Wednesday 17 June 2026 in-person (LSE campus) and online.
Abstracts should be no more than 250 words.
The deadline for the submission of abstracts is 23:59 (BST) on Sunday 12 April 2026. You will be contacted about the outcome of your submission on or before Friday 1 May 2026.
- Paper: a 10-minute presentation of original research
- Poster: a 3-5 minute ‘lightning talk’ presentation accompanied by a poster
- Creative show and tell: a 10-minute presentation sharing an artefact or item with research significance (e.g., archival material, photograph, object)
- Performance: an original artistic expression of up to 10 minutes which relates to academic research or study of the social sciences (e.g., drama, spoken word, dance, poetry, music)
All presentations will be organised into themed panels chaired by LSE academics and will include time for Q&A and discussion.
We look forward to receiving your submissions!
Support
If you have any questions as you prepare your abstract, please send them to the conference organisers via our inquiries form.
Further interdisciplinary research opportunities
Are you an undergraduate who wants to take part in this year's conference but don't have your own research project?
Join the Impact Research Lab for the opportunity to work as part of a multidisciplinary team on a real-world challenge across two weeks in June, culminating in a presentation at this year's Knowledge Beyond Boundaries conference.
For more information and to sign up, visit the Impact Research Lab page.