Announcing the Perugia Psychology Conference

The Umbra Institute announces the first edition of what will be a biennial conference on Psychology and Education, to take place in the medieval university city of Perugia 16-19 June 2027. The call for papers will be sent in September 2026 but we’re encouraging possible presenters to sign up to receive the cfp via email by filling out our brief interest form and to mark their calendars for June 2027. For our response to the perfectly valid question, “Why should I spend some of my very limited research dollars to go to an Italian city I’ve never heard of?, see the tab Why Present in Perugia?

INTEREST FORM

Announcement

This conference is set in the beautiful medieval city of Perugia, the capital of the Umbria region in the heart of Italy, where scholars will meet to share their work in psychology and education. The conference provides a forum for rich cross-cultural exploration that takes advantage of our location for both academic and extracurricular programming.

The conference organizers invite papers from a broad spectrum of psychology and look forward to a wide-ranging discussion that addresses cultural dimensions of psychology and education. We hope to have papers on (but not limited to) the following topics:

Developmental psychology, especially around alternative educational approaches (e.g., Montessori, Reggio-Emilia, etc.);
The impact of social relationships on flourishing throughout the life-span;
Parenting in Italy and elsewhere: Cultural influences on parenting and family life
Challenges of emerging adulthood: What does “growing up” and becoming an adult look like in different cultures? How might cultural dynamics in the family in Italy and other cultures influence becoming an adult?
The psychology of organized crime, whether perpetrators or survivors
The role of place, time orientation, food & drink on well-being, including the so-called Mediterranean lifestyle, a richer social network
The psychological and cultural significance of food as a unifier as well as a cultural barrier
Challenges of climate change, and “environmental identity”
Children’s rights
Challenges of social media on mental and physical health
Innovative practices in pedagogy in psychology, education, and related fields

Interested in presenting? Mark your calendar with the dates above and give us some basic information, including your email address, in this interest form. We’ll keep you posted and send a formal call for papers early next fall.

As many conference attendees will be educators, we welcome papers on pedagogical best practices and integrating experiential learning and community-engaged projects into courses. If you’re a junior scholar and would like to submit but would like some suggestions on your abstract, contact the conference organizers at [email protected]. #4 We’re looking mainly for conference presentations and panels, but we might also have poster sessions or symposia/plenary sessions.

Timeline:

1 September 2026–call for papers sent;
31 December 2026–deadline for proposals;
15 February 2027–notifications of acceptance;
16-19 June 2027–conference takes place.

———————————————————————————-

The Umbra Institute is an American study abroad program founded in 1999 in the gorgeous medieval city of Perugia. Perugia is a big college town in a medium-sized Italian city, halfway between Rome and Florence and perched on a hilltop surrounded by the hills of the verdant region of Umbria. The faculty welcome about 100 students a semester, all of whom take a course in Italian language and culture and then either three or four other courses in English. One of our signature academic offerings is our curricular concentration in Multicultural Psychology. This conference is an outgrowth of that: we love to teach but we want to become one of the nodes, albeit a small one, in the academic research on Psychology and Education. For the last twelve years we’ve run a friendly biennial conference on food (our other central curricular offering) and we want to expand that. For more about why you should mark your calendar for our concert, see the page on our conference website “Why present in Perugia?” as well as the full conference FAQ.