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Apresenta&#231;&#227;oThe definition of a collective subject of politics constituted one of  the most important questions in modern political thought, history and  social sciences. All these disciplines tried to answer the question: who  makes politics? As part of a wider questioning on: what is politics? In  the last decades, however, the names given to collective political  subjects &#8211; such as people, nation, class or masses &#8211; became the object  of an ever growing questioning regarding their adequacy, thus creating a  conceptual crisis.This crisis&#8217; first consequence was the downgrading of any notion of  politics as a collective affair. The view that individuals were both the  base and object of politics became dominant. According to such a view,  the collective should be seen as a mere aggregation of individualities.  Nevertheless, this conceptual crisis also opened up to other  possibilities. Recent years were also marked by the quest for new  concepts or for a renewal of old concepts in order to name the  collective subject of politics. Such a quest, in its many guises,  entails a strategic notion of politics where the plurality of a singular  subject always exceeds the sum of its parts. Such debates around the  names of the collective political subject have been taking place in  domains as diverse as philosophy, history, economics, political science  and anthropology.This conference aims to gather a set of contributions to the question  of the collective subject of politics. The conference welcomes papers  that present theoretical contributions to the debate as well as case  studies gathered from any geographical space and from all historical  periods. It is mainly &#8211; but in no way exclusively &#8211; directed at  researchers from different disciplinary areas working on political  thought and social movements. The working language of the conference is  English. A limited number of papers presented in Portuguese, Spanish or  French may also be accepted. Those interested in presenting a paper at  the conference should submit an abstract no longer than 300 words before  the 31st of December 2011. An answer will be issued before the 10th of  January 2012.Keynote SpeakersBoaventura de Sousa Santos is Director of the Center  for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra, Distinguished Legal  Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School and Global  Legal Scholar at the University of Warwick. His books include Toward a  New Legal Common Sense: Law, Globalization and Emancipation and The Rise  of the Global Left: The World Social Forum and Beyond.James C. Scott is Professor of Political Science and  Anthropology at Yale University. His books include The Art of Not Being  Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia, Domination and  the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts and Weapons of the Weak:  Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance.Pablo S&#225;nchez-Leon is Professor of History at the  University of the Basque Country. His books include Absolutismo y  Comunidad: Las Or&#237;genes Sociales de la Guerra de los Comuneros de  Castilla and La Guerra que nos han contado: 1936 y nosotros (with Jes&#250;s  Izquierdo).Peter Hallward is Professor of Philosophy at the  Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy at Kingston University  London. His books include Damming the Flood: Haiti and the Politics of  Containment and Badiou: A Subject to Truth.Sandro Mezzadra is Professor of Political Theory and  Sociology at the University of Bologna. His books include Crisis in the  Global Economy &#8211; Finantial Markets, Social Struggles and New Political  Scenarios (edited with Andrea Fumagalli) and Diritto di Fuga:  Migrazioni, Cittadinanza, Globalizzazione.Organization    Institute for Contemporary History of the New University of Lisbon    Complutense University of Madrid &#8211; Department for the History of Thought and Social and Political Movements    Birkbeck College of the University of London &#8211; Department of Iberian and Latin American Studies.Conference fees60&#8364;Convenors    Bruno Peixe Dias (University of Lisbon),     Diego Palacios  Cerezales (Complutense University of Madrid),     Jos&#233; Neves (New University  of Lisbon),     Lu&#237;s Trindade (Birkbeck College),     Ricardo Noronha (New  University of Lisbon)     Victor Pereira (University of Pau and Pays de  l&#8217;Adour).Envio de resumosAbstracts (300 words) and a brief CV should be sent to: jose.neves@fcsh.unl.pt&#160;&#160;and&#160;politicsofthemany@gmail.combefore  the 31st of December 2011