The 2025 BAAS Postgraduate Symposium is taking place on November 26th as a hybrid event at Teesside University. You can register for the event on EventBrite. If you are a BAAS member, you can get a discount on your fee by visiting the member area and using the discount code.

Download Programme for the 2025 Symposium

In-person attendee guide / Online attendee guide

‘The people favored and the people oppressed’: The Unequal Struggle for Equality and Rights in America

The original copies of the Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution and the Bill of Rights can be found on permanent display at the United States National Archives. The National Archives describes America’s Founding Documents collectively as ‘the Charters of Freedom [which] have secured the rights of the American people for more than two and a quarter centuries and are considered instrumental to the founding and philosophy of the United States.’ Part of this ‘philosophy’ was rooted in the idea that liberty and equality for mankind was not simply a privilege, but a self-evident truth, laid out in the Declaration of Rights.

The 2025 BAAS Postgraduate Symposium will involve postgraduate researchers at all levels and across all disciplines that address the diverse interpretations, possibilities and liminality of the symposium’s theme of The Unequal Struggle for Equality and Rights in America with presenters discussing the depictions and theorisation of America’s (un)equal past and/or future.

The symposium will be a hybrid event with in-person and online attendance available for presenters and attendees. Catering will be provided in-person with a range of vegetarian and vegan options and a social networking event will take place on campus at the Teesside University Students’ Union opposite The Curve.