CALL FOR PROPOSALS
Rise Up Conference is now accepting presentation proposals! This is your chance to inspire and engage with a dedicated audience at our virtual event on September 8-9, 2025.
We're looking for enthusiastic individuals, whether you're a system-impacted academic, doctor, lawyer, program director, or practitioner, to share your expertise and insights.​​
Rise Up: A Movement of Lived Expertise - Where Culture, Systems, and Institutions Shift
This year’s conference is more than an event — it’s a movement. A space where education liberates and action inspires. Formerly incarcerated leaders take the stage as experts, sharing hard-won truths to transform culture, systems, and institutions. Together, with our true allies we can Rise Up! Lived experience is and always will be at the core. We honor past struggles while strategizing for a future free from systemic barriers.
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We are calling for proposals that spark transformation — stories of personal or collective change, bold visions for education inside and beyond prison walls, and innovative ideas rooted in your lived and learned expertise.
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We move forward by drawing strength from our community members, both directly impacted and allies, fueling innovation through wisdom, resilience, and truth. Your voice has the power to liberate, to reimagine education, and to shift entrenched systems and narratives. This is your platform. Your moment. So, Rise Up with Us!
SUBJECT AREA TRACKS
The six tracks include: 1) Advocacy, 2) Allyship, 3) Equity and Inclusion, 4) Programming and Informal Education, 5) Research, Science, Technology, and Math, 6) Pathways to Profession, described below:
Advocacy
Policy change is a necessary and essential goal. We seek proposals that uplift advocacy efforts led by currently and formerly incarcerated people to increase access to education and opportunities for meaningful careers within the field of higher education in prison.
Allyship
We understand that partnership with true allies is an essential part of liberation work. This year, the Rise Up Steering Committee warmly invites pairs or groups comprising directly impacted people along with their allies to showcase, as co-presenters, the best of what this kind of collaboration can produce. Presenters may describe programs, research projects, campaigns, or any other kind of collaboration that has borne fruit for the reform movement. Proposals should speak to the roles each presenter plays in the research, program, or initiative, and to the specific benefits of working across the lines of criminal legal system involvement. *We ask that Ally presentations are co-presented with someone who is system-impacted. This ensures authenticity and centers the voices of those with lived experience.*
Equity & Inclusion
Classism and Racism are pervasive in all institutions in the United States including prison and higher education systems. We seek proposals that call to the surface the pervasive reality of oppression, as well as possibilities for true equity and inclusion to transform and abolish systems.
Programming & Informal Education
Education is not limited to experiences recognized by institutions. We seek innovative models for education inside and outside of prisons led by currently and formerly incarcerated people.
Research/ STEM
Research allows us to better understand our experiences and contribute to collective knowledge. We seek proposals that demonstrate and uplift the transformative potential of research in all areas with an emphasis on STEM, which is often neglected in higher education in prison programming.
Pathway to Profession
Are you working in a field in which formerly incarcerated applicants face particularly difficult barriers to entry, promotion and advancement, or professional success? In this track, we seek presenters from professional fields traditionally inaccessible to those experiencing lifelong collateral consequences of incarceration. We hope to see presenters from the fields of medicine, law, finance, business, academia, tech, and more who can speak to their experiences and explain how they overcame the barriers to work in their field.
Not interested in presenting, but still want to contribute? We'd love for you to join our 2025 Rise Up Conference review team! If you're passionate about education and positive change, please complete our Reviewer Interest Form to learn more and express your interest.
Applications close on July 3, 2025