Long-Distance Relationships: Communication and the Mennonite Diaspora

October 23–24, 2026

A Conference Hosted by the Centre for Transnational Mennonite Studies
at The University of Winnipeg

The Centre for Transnational Mennonite Studies invites submissions for its annual conference at the University of Winnipeg, to be held this year on October 23 and 24, 2026. Our conference will consider how Mennonites (along with other Anabaptists) have met the persistent challenge of communication within an increasingly dispersed global community. Even as communication over great distances was often difficult, the imperative to speak across borders became particularly pronounced when it was connected to prospects for new settlement ventures, the extension of mutual aid during war and revolution, or the affective bonds between family members. This tradition extended back to the earliest periods of Anabaptist history, with Doopsgezinden regularly writing to their counterparts in Prussia, while the nineteenth and twentieth centuries saw a flurry of transatlantic letters between North America and the Russian Empire/Soviet Union. Advances in printing technology in the nineteenth century corresponded with a growth in Mennonite newspapers, which included published letters epitomized by John F. Funk’s Herald of Truth and the Mennonitische Rundschau. Since 1977, the Mennonitische Post has taken on a similar role, helping create the sense of a “transnational village” by keeping Mennonites across Latin America, Canada, and the US informed about daily happenings and more significant developments.

At times, communication implied reckoning with linguistic, cultural, and technological barriers. This was evident in both language shifts in acculturating communities as well as missionary work and the growth of Indigenous churches throughout the Global South. For some traditionalist Anabaptist communities, ownership or use of certain communication devices also became a point of contention.

From letter-writing to the printing of pamphlets, newspapers, magazines, and bulletins, to the use of rural party lines, cell phones and WhatsApp, radio, TV, email, and social media, we invite conference applicants to propose papers that foreground the historical questions raised by the adoption of varied forms of communications technology by Anabaptists over the last five hundred years. We also welcome a limited number of papers that may offer points of comparison by considering how other migrant or faith-based communities have embraced, rejected, or employed these means of connection.       

Please send individual paper or panel submissions to the Chair in Mennonite Studies by May 1, 2026, at b.nobbs-thiessen@uwinnipeg.ca. This should include a short abstract of no more than 200 words and a CV.