Global dynamics such as the growing demand for commodities or the financial and food price crises have led to a sharp price increase in agricultural products and mining products. These global dynamics together with national policy and legal reforms have provoked large and rapid land use changes for agro-industrial and mining purposes worldwide. Land and resources are central to social power and belonging, human (re)production, political control, environmental systems and cultural representation. Their changing use, control, distribution and representation are contested and in many cases lead to conflict.

The international symposium "Conflicts over Land and Global Change" will address four main aspects: spatiality; state, authority, and citizenship; labor; social movements. The symposium aims to bring together scholars from different fields of research and from different regions of the world to further exchange on conceptual approaches to conflicts over land and to compare empirical findings across world regions.

Scholars in the junior research group "Global Change – Local Conflicts? Land conflicts in Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa in the context of interdependent transformation processes" (GLOCON) explores how global spatial-temporal transformation processes affect local land conflicts in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. The group is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF).