The European Sociological Association (ESA) conference, themed "Tension, Trust, and Transformation"  provides a unique opportunity for sociologists, researchers, and academics to come together, exchange ideas, and contribute to the advancement of sociological knowledge. The 16th ESA Conference promises to be a landmark event, fostering collaboration and innovation within the sociological community.

Arguments

What is the value in thousands of social scientists gathering in one location to discuss their work? What value accrues from a large international conference and what is lost without it? Since pandemic restrictions were implemented in the last few years, we have become more familiar with on-line meetings and seminars, with the 15th conference being held online and widely regarded as highly successful.  Indeed, it is probable that many forms of work, especially that of academic research, will henceforth use online facilities to a much greater extent than in previous times when the technological capacity may have existed but the psychological mind-set to fully engage with the world of online work may not have.  However, it may also be fair to say that in-person meetings are also now being reevaluated for their intrinsic value.  We always suspected that there was equal value in interactions outside the conference seminar room and now, it is widely accepted that the physicality of a conference cannot be substituted by a screen call i.e. while online work may have resulted in greater efficiencies related to less travel and higher frequency of meetings, it has also inhibited the depth of communication that exists when working in-person with others. During face-to-face conferences, the dynamic within the seminar room, walking around book fairs and the continuation of discussions over coffee, lunch and evening meals are human activities which cannot be substituted.  

The COVID-19 pandemic, while acutely felt the world over, was but another driver of inequality, which added to increasing geo-political tensions across the world.  Societal challenges were manifold before the pandemic and are not likely to disappear.  Arguably, the ways in which societies across the world have dealt with Covid and other challenges has been in some ways correlated with regionally specific longer range socio-cultural traditions.  No country has been immune to the tensions of societal limitations on working and family life, not least in the form of travel restrictions. Similarly, there is manifest variability in the trust that people have in scientists and policy makers responsible for dealing with Covid.   Sociological work is fundamental for dealing with societal challenges, and sociological conferences are the engines driving the ideas which can address these challenges.

The title of the theme for the 16th conference: “Tension, Trust and Transformation”, seeks to capture the experiences of recent times, crises and global challenges, such as the Covid-19 pandemic, climate change debates and activism, inequalities and violence, persisting levels of populism and the politics of instability. At the same time, it raises sociological concerns about perennial and new problems with a view to asserting the potential for sociological work to have a transformative societal impact in different social spheres.

What do the social sciences have to offer a world going through a persistent pandemic, increasing concern about the acceleration of climate change, a noticeable retreat from democracy and a crisis due to war in Europe?

We know that the heterogeneity of sociology in terms of both theory and methods is at the core of its strength. Given any aspect of society, there are likely to be a wide range of perspectives, each of which have established literatures, case studies, endemic findings, and critiques of other

perspectives.  Theoretical frameworks span micro social relations to macro analyses of institutional structures.  Methodologies help us to understand phenomena in terms of the actor’s understandings and their lived context, through to statistical representations and models, making space for subjectivist as well as more objectivist scientific approaches. This multiplicity of possibilities means that sociology has always, well before the push for multidisciplinarity, had the potential to throw light upon causes and consequences of inequalities in a variety of ways unhindered by a narrower approach.  Debate and disagreement, discussion and discourse, hypotheses and evidence are at the heart of the discipline, and the 16th ESA conference will be the prime forum to showcase our work, argue for different positions, hone methodologies and arguments against opposing perspectives, as well as to joint networking. 

Tension

Societies are riddled with tensions. Forms of nationalism are in the ascendancy where borders are being strengthened, cultural differences are being used to promote political ends and forms of authoritarianism are taking hold.  The consequences of political, cultural, historical and economic tensions are felt in harsh terms when conflict between nations escalates.  There are, nonetheless some familiar tensions in terms of the persistent inequalities of class, gender, ethnicity, intersectionality, as well as political and economic tension between rich and poor countries, and in many cases also between different areas of the same country. To these, we can add more recent tensions related to sexualities, gender, transgender, gender-based violence, climate change and the expansion of digital society such as the ways in which social media is used to leverage anger and negativity.

Trust

Trust in institutions and key individuals such as scientists and politicians can be seen as being closely associated with stable and robust systems.  The trajectories of trust in government, media, science, business and criminal justice ebb and flow but the rising tide of populism, the growing presence of movements founded on conspiracy theories, and the increasing difficulty with which democratic societies face the process of governing suggest that there is a crisis of trust.  A paradox for sociology is that it must remain at the critical edge of discourse in order to identify institutional and systemic failures and yet it must also be involved in finding solutions to wicked problems through in-depth analysis of the individual’s practices and understandings and thereby contribute to the building and maintenance of trust.

Transformation

For those engaged with funded research and evaluations of research and publications the need to demonstrate impact has been a growing requirement over the years. For some this has been a distraction from undertaking pure research but for many it has been a welcome exercise in refocusing research to maximise its transformational potential.  The theoretical and methodological diversity of sociology and its importance to all cognate social science disciplines renders it productive at many levels from campaigning activists to policy makers, from ethnographic to (inter)national studies, incorporating subjective and objective perspectives, and through exploratory and explanatory frameworks.  The desire to make a difference, to have an impact, to transform society for the better is widespread among sociological projects.

The 16th ESA Conference will be a place to tackle tensions and trust and to discuss alternatives for social transformation. Sociologists and social scientists are welcome to submit their proposals and to join this important international scientific event. The ESA looks forward to receiving your submission!

Session Types

• While Research Network and Research Stream sessions cover the immense variety of sociological inquiry, Plenary, Semi-Plenary and Midday sessions offer the opportunity to engage in core debates. All session formats will include time for open discussion.
• Semi-Plenaries (SPs) discuss the main conference theme from the viewpoint of different fields of research. They promote discussion between speakers, next to that with participants. SPs are based on proposals made by the ESA Research Networks and the Executive Committee. This time, three of them are open for abstract submission.
• Research Network (RN) sessions feature research papers submitted in response to this Call for Papers. The majority of sessions is organised by ESA's 38 Research Networks. RNs are open to all ESA members. All RNs hold a business meeting at the conference. New members are cordially invited to join one or several RNs of their choice. Note that many RNs organise Joint Sessions (JS).
• Research Stream (RS) sessions are made by sociologists from several European countries who come together to organise sessions on very specific sociological topics. RSs are self-organised bodies with a loose structure which is determined by the researchers who join the stream. While some RSs are regularly organising sessions at ESA conferences, other RSs offer ad hoc sessions around spur-of-the-moment topics.

Themes

The description of themes and coordinators of the Semi-Plenaries, Research Networks, Joint Sessions and Research Streams are available here (or in the pdf linked below).

Here you will find the official Call for Papers, which includes information on the submission process, conference themes, and other pertinent details.

Should you have any questions or require further information, please do not hesitate to contact us at esa2024@europeansociology.org

Call for Papers for Semi-Plenaries

• Advancing Public Sociology in dealing with stakeholders and policy makers on social issues: challenges and perspectives in Europe )
• Harassment in Institutions and Society
• Far Right-Wing Populism in Current Democracies: Habits, Emotions, and Gender Performances

Call for Papers by Research Networks (RN)

• Ageing in Europe
• The Sociology of the Arts
• Biographical Perspectives on European Societies
• The Sociology of Children and Childhood
• Sociology of Consumption
• Critical Political Economy
• Sociology of Culture
• Economic Sociology
• Sociology of Education
• Sociology of Emotions
• Environment and Society
• Sociology of Families and Intimate Lives
• Gender relations in the labour market and the welfare state
• Global, Transnational and Cosmopolitan Sociology
• Sociology of Health and Medicine
• Work, Employment and Industrial Relations
• Sociology of Communications and Media Research
• Sociology of Professions
• Qualitative Methods
• Quantitative Methods
• Sociology of Risk and Uncertainty
• Sexuality
• Science and Technology
• Social Movements
• Sociology of Social Policy and Social Welfare
• Southern European Societies
• Society and Sports
• Social Theory
• Youth and Generation
• Ethnic Relations, Racism and Antisemitism
• Political Sociology
• Women’s and Gender Studies
• Sociology of Religion
• Sociology of Migration
• Sociology of Social Transformations: East and West
• Urban Sociology
• Space, Society and Rurality

Call for Papers by Research Streams (RS)

• Institutional Ethnography
• Sociology of Celebration
• Interpretative Interactionism: sociology of Interactions and Meaning
• Social Sustainability
• Active labour market policies: implementation, challenges and innovation
• European intimate lives and reproductive choices in the face of planetary crises
• Politics of engagement and new social pragmatism
• Enacting solidarity and citizenship across social fields and scales
• Representing society. Sociological cultures of publication
• Producing, Contesting, and Reconfiguring Urban Sustainability
• Sociology of Spatial Mobilities
• Linking Ages - Towards a Sociological Theorizing of Age Constructions Across the Life Course
• Emotions and Neoinstitutionalism
• Experiencing and Representing Precariousness: Emerging Labour Configurations and
• Worker Agency
• Armed Forces, Conflict Resolution, and Peace Building
• Tensions in the Transformation of Knowledge (Cultures): Exploring Stability and Social Order in the Second Modernity
• Sociological Research in Portugal - Research Stream in Portuguese (abstracts and presentations to be done in Portuguese)
• Exploring and Consolidating New Research Strategies in the Post-COVID-19 Era
• Rethinking Dependence: Trust and Social Hierarchies in an Era of Uncertainty
• Joint Sessions between Research Network Sessions

Other

European Sociological Association PhD Summer School 2024

Confirmed Speakers

• Michael Burawoy, University of California Berkeley, USA  
• Anália Torres, University of Lisbon, Portugal  
• Nira Yuval-Davis, University of East London, UK
• Michael Biggs, University of Oxford, UK
• Jana Hainsworth, Eurochild, Belgium
• Jason Arday, University of Cambridge, UK & Chantelle Lewis, University of Oxford, UK
• And many more speakers to be announced soon.

Deadlines 2024

• 15 January: Abstract submission deadline
• Mid-March: Notification of acceptance (sent to abstract submitters via ConfTool)  
• March/April: Opening of Participant Registration in ConfTool
• 27-30 August: 16th ESA Conference in Porto, Portugal  

Submission guidelines

To ensure your participation, don't miss the abstract submission deadline on January 15th, 2024. Abstracts must be submitted through the conference platform

Create an account in ConfTool 2024 in order to submit an abstract and register for participation in the 16th ESA Conference in Porto, 27-30 August 2024. Registrations from previous ConfTools have not been transferred – you need a new account.

Tips for ConfTools :

• Validate your e-mail address in ConfTool 2024. Once you create a user account, you will receive an automatic confirmation message with a link – please click. This will ensure that you receive important information about your abstract and the conference. We also recommend to ensure that esa2024[at]conftool.pro is on your whitelist.
• You can always ‘Edit User Account Details’ in ConfTool. There is a direct link for this in the ‘Overview’ of your ConfTool 2024 account. You can change your address, affiliation, information for the visa invitation letter offered through ConfTool, and much more.
• If you and your co-authors change your mind about who will / can present the paper at the Porto conference, send us an e-mail. We can change this until the deadline for participant registration for paper presenters (until March/April).
• During participant registration, when you choose the category for ESA members (who benefit from reduced conference fees), please make the effort to double-check the status of your ESA membership in the ESA members area (‘My Dashboard’). If your membership has expired, you can renew it directly in ConfTool (by choosing the category which adds the ESA membership to your conference registration).
• You can visit and use your ConfTool 2024 account regularly. Find out about the status of your abstract, your registration and payment details, print out your invoice, download invitation and confirmation letters, and browse the conference agenda once it is ready

Notes for Authors :

• Please do not send us a full copy of your paper (neither before nor after the conference).
• Abstracts sent by email cannot be accepted.
• Authors are invited to submit their abstract either to a Research Network (RN), a Joint Session (JS), a Research Stream (RS) or a Semi-Plenary (SP). Note that submitters of a SP abstract must hold a PhD (set date: 5 February 2024)
• Each participant can submit and present one paper.
• All submitting/presenting authors can be second author of one paper or more.
• Abstracts should not exceed 250 words.
• Abstracts will be peer-reviewed and selected for presentation by the RN/RS/SP coordinators.
• The ESA membership is not mandatory, except for RN/RS/SP coordinators and session chairs as well as all RN board members and the ESA Executive Committee. ESA members benefit from reduced conference fees!
• Note that the 16^th ESA Conference will take place in an on-site format only, in Porto (Portugal).