Australian Night Studies Symposium 2026

Whose Night? Power, Territory and Urban Life After Dark

Tuesday 3 November 2026, UNSW Sydney

• About & Call for Papers

About The Australian Night Studies Symposium

Across the world, cities and governments are increasingly turning their attention to the night. The emergence and increasing appointment of night mayors, night commissions and governance of the “night-time economy” reflects a growing recognition that the night is central to urban economic, cultural and political life. At the same time, scholars across disciplines have begun to coalesce around an emerging field of Night Studies.Yet the night remains unevenly understood. For some, it is a site of pleasure, creativity and experimentation; for others, a terrain of labour, surveillance, vulnerability or exclusion. The night is where cities, towns and precincts negotiate questions of safety, noise, intoxication, gender, mobility, race, work, culture and public space with particular intensity.Hosted at UNSW Sydney, the Australian Night Studies Symposium brings together researchers, policymakers, artists, workers and practitioners to explore the night not simply as an economy or site of regulation, but as a territory structured by creativity, innovation, power, care, infrastructure and, social and political conflict.The symposium seeks to contribute to the development of Night Studies as a genuinely interdisciplinary field for understanding contemporary urban life after dark.While we welcome papers on any topic related to the night, we are particularly interested in contributions that examine the night as:
__ a territory of governance,
__ a cultural infrastructure,
__ a labour condition,
__ a sensory environment,
__ a political terrain,
__ or a liminal site of inequality, experimentation and social transformation.

Themes: