Section Sessions are planned by the ASA Sections. Section sessions are open to all paper/extended abstract submissions that meet the submission criteria. You do not need to be a member of a section to submit to a section session.
Biology and Society Section
Evolution, Biology and Sociology
The session is devoted to the broad topic of how evolutionary approaches and biology contribute to sociological analysis.
(Session Organizer) Noah P. Mark, University of North Carolina-Charlotte
Biosocial Interactions
The session is devoted to presentations that investigate how social and biological influences jointly and interactively impact social outcomes.
(Session Organizer) Hexuan Liu, University of Cincinnati
Community and Urban Sociology Section
Third Places: Beyond the Home and the Workplace
Third places are gathering places that are neither the home nor the workplace, including bars, community centers, public parks, churches, schools, and shopping malls. While much research has shown how COVID-19 changed people’s relationships to home and work, this panel welcomes submissions that examine the changing role of third places in post-COVID cities and communities.
(Session Organizer) Andrea M. Leverentz, North Carolina State University; Matthew Mleczko, Rutgers University
The Structures and Institutions That Shape Place-Making
Place-making is often studied from the perspective of residents and community members, but structures and institutions also play a central role in how places are defined, contained, and produced. This session will explore how structures like racism, capitalism, and sexism as well as institutions like government, educational and medical establishments, the real estate industry, and the labor market contribute to place-making in a variety of spatial contexts.
(Session Organizer) Judith R. Halasz, SUNY-New Paltz; Maria Akchurin, Loyola University-Chicago
Mechanisms of Segregation
Many researchers study segregation, but treat it as a noun, as if it were a disembodied condition of cities, suburbs, and other places. This panel invites papers that focus on the word’s root verb — “to segregate” — and examine the specific mechanisms that produce and reproduce segregation in the city. Submissions can be qualitative or quantitative, use historical or contemporary data, and focus on the micro-level or macro-level of analysis, as long as the mechanisms of segregation are the focus.
(Session Organizer) John R. Logan, Brown University
Urban Sociology and the Legacy of Chicago
Chicago has been front and center in the long history of urban sociology. This session invites reflections on old and new empirical work centering “The Second City,” including critiques of or admiration for U.S. urban sociology’s long obsession with Chicago.
(Session Organizer) Lacee Anne Satcher, Boston College; (Session Organizer) Yunhan Wen, Princeton University
Community and Urban Sociology Section Roundtables
Open Call: Community and Urban Sociology Section Roundtables
(Session Organizer) Aaron J. Howell, University of Mount Union; (Session Organizer) Sarah Elizabeth Farr, University of Michigan
Family Section
The Demography of Family Inequality and Wellbeing (Co-sponsored by Section on Sociology of Population)
This session is jointly sponsored by the Family and Population sections. Demographic factors related to relationship formation and stability, transitions to parenthood, and family processes have important implications for population outcomes including marriage and fertility rates, the intergenerational transmission of inequality, and health disparities. Papers in this session will take a demographic perspective on these and other processes related to family formation, family inequality, and well-being broadly. Submissions taking account of diversity and variation in family relationships are particularly welcome.
(Session Organizer) Kristin Perkins, Georgetown University
Public Policies, family dynamics, and well-being
This session seeks to highlight new research on the ways public policies affect family formation, processes, and outcomes broadly. Papers that consider how public policy regulates, controls, and supports families through various programs and services and those that give special consideration to variation in such influences across social groups, are particularly sought.
(Session Organizer) Liming Li, King’s College London
Race, Families, and Reproductive Health (Co-sponsored by Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities)
This session is jointly sponsored by the Family Section and the Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities. We are interested in papers that explore how reproductive health of minoritized families is impacted by family relationships and institutions, broadly. Papers may consider, for example, the impact of health and health care systems, the legal system, the labor market, or immigration enforcement on reproductive health outcomes among minoritized groups.
(Session Organizer) Monica Lisette Caudillo Contreras, University of Maryland-College Park; Prisca Gayles, University of Nevada-Reno
Technology and Organization of Family Life
This session seeks to highlight new work on the influence of technology on the practices, processes, and outcomes of families in our post-pandemic period. Possible paper topics include but are not limited to: the use of AI tools in concerted cultivation and intensive mothering, crafting ideal family schedules and family life, balancing work and family when both are at home, the use of technology to keep track of household and family related everyday activities and events, presentation of families on social media.
(Session Organizer) Amanda E. Fehlbaum, Youngstown State University
Child Gender, Parenting, and Intergenerational Relationships Across the Life Course
Child gender is associated with parenting practices, intergenerational support, and the quality of child-parent relationships. Papers in this session will consider how child gender affects parents, kin, and children’s family processes and outcomes across the life course. Submissions taking account of diversity and variation in family relationships are particularly sought.
(Session Organizer) Emily Fitzgibbons Shafer, Portland State University
Family Section Roundtables
The Family Section Roundtable session invites various family research topics. Accepted submissions will be organized into thematic areas for individual roundtables with a small number of participants. Each table will have a presider. Roundtables typically help facilitate meaningful conversations among participants.
(Session Organizer) Katherine Tierney, Western Michigan University; Mahala Dyer Stewart, Hamilton College
Section on Aging and the Life Course
Inequality in the Transition to Adulthood
This session aims to bring together papers that address the manifestations, consequences, and explanations for inequality in the transition to adulthood. We welcome papers that elucidate the structures and institutional processes that produce inequality in the transition to adulthood as well as those that document these inequalities or consider the role of policy in either alleviating or exacerbating inequality.
(Session Organizer) Jessica Halliday Hardie, CUNY-Hunter College
Social Ties and Networks Across the Life Course
We welcome papers that highlight the social nature of and/or importance of social relationships and networks across the life course. Although papers may focus on any life stage, we prioritize those that adopt a dynamic approach to the changing role of or patterns in social relationships across life stages. Papers may focus on a range of topics (e.g., health, education, occupations) provided they contain a clear relational component.
(Session Organizer) Adam Roth, Oklahoma State University
Section on Aging and the Life Course Roundtables
Open Call: Section on Aging and the Life Course Roundtables
(Session Organizer) Adriana Reyes, Cornell University; Patricia Homan, Florida State University
Section on Altruism, Morality, and Social Solidarity
The Role of Culture, Institutions, and Power in Moral Action
How does morality impact human and social behavior? What roles do culture, institutions, and power in socializing people into a particular moral paradigm? How do structural and relational dynamics impact moral behavior? This session seeks to invite papers that address morality in action and the social conditions giving rise to moral frameworks.
(Session Organizer) Dana M. Moss, University of Notre Dame
Section on Animals and Society
Animals Across Sociological Inquiry
This is an open paper session that asks sociologists to consider the myriad ways animals are present in sociological inquiry. It welcomes papers from scholars who are well versed in animals and society scholarship as well as from those whose work may involve animals (be it through natural scientific practice, political history, analysis of gender or race, environment, or something else) but have yet to fully engage animals and society scholarship.
(Session Organizer) Jordan Fox, SUNY-Buffalo
Section on Animals and Society Roundtables
Open Call: Animals and Society Section Roundtables
(Session Organizer) Jordan Fox, SUNY-Buffalo
Section on Asia and Asian America
Asian and Asian American Women
Papers in this session examine how Asian and Asian American women navigate their identities and status by responding to the racialized social, economic, and political landscapes in both Asia and the United States.
(Session Organizer) Elena Shih, Brown University; Le Lin, University of Hawaii-Manoa; Yasmin Ortiga, Singapore Management University
Racial Hierarchies and Identity
Papers in this session examine racial hierarchies and identities of Asians in both Asia and the United States, with a focus on the evolving context of the hosting societies and global crises.
(Session Organizer) Elena Shih, Brown University; Yasmin Ortiga, Singapore Management University
Institutions, Values, and Family Changes in Asia
Papers in this session examine how changes in institutions and values are intertwined with family changes in various parts of Asia.
(Session Organizer) Elena Shih, Brown University; Le Lin, University of Hawaii-Manoa; Yasmin Ortiga, Singapore Management University
Section on Asia and Asian America Roundtables
Roundtable presentations and discussion.
(Session Organizer) Amy Hsin, CUNY-Queens College
Section on Children and Youth
Centering Child and Youth Perspectives: Young people as social thinkers and actors
The Sociology of Children & Youth section is a distinct forum for scholarship featuring the voices and perspectives of young people themselves. This session features papers highlighting the viewpoints of children and youth on issues that matter to them. Papers in this session will explore young people’s thinking on contemporary social issues, their agency in addressing these social issues, and their organizing in relation to current social problems.
(Session Organizer) Holly Foster, Texas A&M University-College Station
Children, Youth & Work
Young people engage in various forms of paid and unpaid work in both private and public settings. From emotional labor and care work within the family to door-to-door fundraising for their schools, from helping out in family businesses to creating digital content, even young children make many economic and social contributions to the world around them. The dynamics of child labor, youth unemployment and job training, and young workers’ unionization efforts on college campuses and in the service industry further point to the need for sociological engagement with young people as workers. For this session, we welcome papers from a variety of methodological and theoretical perspectives that explore the intersection of childhood, youth, and work.
(Session Organizer) Jessica Taft, University of California-Santa Cruz
Section on Children and Youth Roundtables
Open Call: Section on Children and Youth Roundtables
(Session Organizer) Margaret A. Hagerman, Mississippi State University
Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements
Mobilization and Contemporary Democratic Elections: Coping with Violence & Extremism
Recent election cycles in nations around the globe have led to rising concerns over the vulnerability of democratic norms and safeguards. In the U.S., for instance, the emboldening of hate groups, the sanitization of the January 6th insurrection, increasing appeals to violence, extremist rhetoric, and even assassination attempts have compounded an already troubling situation in 2024. Here and elsewhere, the rising toxicity of politics, which appears unlikely to ameliorate in coming years, is a major threat to the sustainment of democracy. Given such context, this session explores instances of collective action in response to these challenges: how have grassroots organizations adapted to an increasingly dangerous political sphere? In which ways do activists with different agendas address an environment in which dissent, debate, and organization carry higher risks of retaliation? Given that strong social movements are essential to any hope of rebuilding a tolerant and inclusive consensus in American society, learning about their challenges and strategies holds much importance for the future of democratic governance.
(Session Organizer) David Cunningham, Washington University-St. Louis; Marcos Emilio Perez, Washington and Lee University
Recent Advances in Social Movement Research
This is an open session designed to highlight cutting edge advances and developments in social movements in any aspect.
(Session Organizer) Edwin Amenta, University of California-Irvine
Advances in Data and Methods for Collective Behavior/Social Movements Research
Collective behavior and social movements (CBSM) was among the first sociological subfields to embrace the revolution in digital (and/or “big”) data and computational methods. Since then, the sources and types of data and methods have grown enormously, including non-computational methods, such as digital ethnography. Building on last year’s ASA session featuring high-quality research drawing on recent advances in data and methods, this session seeks to highlight innovative and productive uses of data and cutting-edge methods, as well as the analytical frameworks that tie them together. Examples of data include, but are not limited to, newly digitized archives, content from social media and so-called alt-tech platforms, simulations, experiments, fine-grained spatial observations, multimodal digital data, and AI-generated media. In addition to showcasing these and other kinds of data, the session will emphasize computational and quantitative methods, but aims to include a range of methods, including advances in qualitative and mixed-methods approaches.
(Session Organizer) Daniel Karell, Yale University; Tom Einhorn, University of British Columbia; Eunkyung Song, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Section on Collective Behavior and Social Movements Roundtables
This is a roundtable session to address the variety of work in collective behavior and social movements.
(Session Organizer) Weijun Yuan, University of California-Irvine
Section on Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology
Artificial Intelligence in the Workplace (Co-sponsored by Section on Organizations, Occupations and Work)
We invite paper submissions under the topic of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the workplace. Thanks to a special relationship between the Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology (CITAMS) section and the journal Information, Communication & Society (ICS), all papers with a theme of information, communication, or media that are presented at the 2025 meetings of the ASA are eligible for submission to a special issue of ICS edited by the CITAMS chair each fall.
(Session Organizer) Barbara Kiviat, Stanford University; Simone Zhang, New York University
Communication, Information Technology, and Media Sociology Open Topic Panel
Open to all papers about communication, information technology, and media sociology. Thanks to a special relationship between the Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology (CITAMS) section and the journal Information, Communication & Society (ICS), all papers with a theme of information, communication, or media that are presented at the 2025 meetings of the ASA are eligible for submission to a special issue of ICS edited by the CITAMS chair each fall.
(Session Organizer) Dhiraj Murthy, University of Texas at Austin
Section on Communication, Information Technology, and Media Sociology Roundtables
Open Call: Section on Communication, Information Technology, and Media Sociology Roundtables
(Session Organizer) Shiv Issar, Nazareth University
Section on Comparative-Historical Sociology
Theorizing Crisis (Co-sponsored by Theory Section)
This is a session sponsored by the Comparative Historical Sociology and Theory Sections. We welcome papers that address the role of economic, political, or ecological crises in historical and comparative perspective. We encourage innovative approaches that bridge historical analysis with sociological theory – including but not limited to Marxist crisis theory, Gramscian notions of organic crisis, conjunctural theory, world-systems approaches, postcolonial theory, and discursive or cultural theories of crisis – to illuminate the nature and dynamics of crises across different historical and geographic contexts. Submissions may address topics such as: crises as rupturing events, temporalities of social change, crises as political opportunities, among others.
(Session Organizer) Cedric de Leon, University of Massachusetts-Amherst; Claire Laurier Decoteau, University of Illinois-Chicago; Liza Weinstein, Northeastern University
Methods and Methodological Innovations in Comparative Historical Sociology
This session seeks to explore new methods, methodological approaches, and innovations that advance the field of comparative and historical sociology. Traditionally, comparative-historical sociology combines in-depth historical analysis with comparative methods to address fundamental questions about macro-sociological structures, processes, and outcomes across space and time. We invite paper submissions that push these established approaches in new directions. Papers may do this by focusing on innovations in research design, data collection, data analysis, or the use of new and/or unconventional sources in comparative-historical analysis. We encourage the submission of work—whether descriptive or causal—that explores new theoretical and methodological thinking on the nature of comparison, temporality, and history in sociological research. We welcome critical reflections on CHS methods, especially the analytical strategies, issues, and challenges of traditional, Millian comparison in historical sociology.
(Session Organizer) Jen Triplett, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor; Salih O. Noor, University of Chicago
Legacies of Colonialism
Comparative Historical Sociology forms a distinguished disciplinary tradition in the study of colonialism, including the long-run and ongoing consequences of colonial structures, relations, and institutions on modern-day societies, particularly in terms of power relations, social inequalities, state development, democracy, and socioeconomic development. We welcome papers exploring research questions related, but not limited, to these themes in various parts of the world. While we are open to longstanding theoretical traditions such as dependency, world-systems, and postcolonial theories, we are particularly interested in papers that advance or rethink comparative historical approaches to colonialism and its legacies. We also encourage papers that address discontinuities and ruptures such as postcolonial critical junctures, anti-colonial agency, and contestation. In particular, we encourage sociologists of Africa to submit papers weighing in on the ongoing debates in the social science and humanities research on the region.
(Session Organizer) Salih O. Noor, University of Chicago
Open Session on Comparative Historical Sociology
We welcome submissions to this open session from a broad range of methodologies and topical areas, including but not limited to, gender, sexuality, race and racialization, state-formation, environments and ecologies, disability and ableism, colonialism, and political economies. We especially welcome papers from graduate students, early career scholars, or researchers new to comparative-historical sociology.
(Session Organizer) Heidi Christine Nicholls, Binghamton University
Section on Comparative-Historical Sociology Roundtables
We welcome submissions to this open roundtable session from a broad range of methodologies and topical areas, including but not limited to, gender, sexuality, race and racialization, state-formation, environments and ecologies, disability and ableism, colonialism, and political economies. We especially welcome papers from graduate students, early career scholars, or researchers new to comparative-historical sociology.
(Session Organizer) Jen Triplett, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor; Cedric de Leon, University of Massachusetts-Amherst
Section on Crime, Law, and Deviance
Queer Criminology in Precarious Sociolegal Climates
This panel sponsored by the Crime, Law, and Deviance section explores emerging efforts in queer criminology in the current social, political, and legal landscape, particularly as it intersects with concerns about work. Renewed criminalization of LGBTQ people, whether in public, in schools, at work, or at home, has increased the reach of the carceral system and had cascading negative effects on safety and belonging. Additionally, post-secondary education has been a major target of anti-diversity and anti-LGBTQ efforts, resulting in increased precarity for sociologists championing LGBTQ rights during a time when educators are already facing increased vulnerability at a structural level. What impacts do these stressors have on conducting queer criminological work and our ability to acquire new knowledge, educate others, and transform existing policies and practices? What effects do they have on sociologists themselves – some of whom share identities with the groups they study – to actively investigate and oppose marginalization while navigating it in their lives and workplaces? And how might we support generative paths forward? CLD encourages submissions from sociologists working not only in academia, but also those in advocacy, policy, and community organizing to share their insights. Submissions may be empirical, conceptual/theoretical, or pedagogical.
(Session Organizer) Vanessa R. Panfil, Old Dominion University
Labor, Markets and Work in the Criminal-Legal System
This panel sponsored by the Crime, Law, and Deviance section highlights research at the intersection of labor, markets, and work in the criminal legal system. Sociological scholarship on the criminal legal system conceptualizes policing, courts, prisons and correctional supervision as institutions of social control. Each of these institutions, however, comprise thousands of individual organizations, which are also places of work for millions of people. Emerging research turns its focus on street-level “justice” bureaucrats, including police officers, prosecutors, defense attorneys, prison officers, treatment staff, parole officers and more. Papers in this panel draw on theories of labor, work and organizations to examine how organizational processes, labor markets, and workers’ practices and subjectivities shape the development, maintenance and reproduction of the harm perpetuated by the criminal legal system.
(Session Organizer) Jennifer Carlson, Arizona State University-Tempe
Section on Crime, Law, and Deviance Roundtables
Featuring papers related to Crime, Law, and Deviance.
(Session Organizer) Holly Foster, Texas A&M University-College Station
Section on Decision-Making, Social Networks, and Society
Networks, Inequality, and Social Integration
We invite papers using social network analyses to explore the relationship between social inequality and group dynamics, broadly defined. These papers could focus, for example, on how social ties exacerbate or mitigate inequality between social or demographic groups, or how inequality shapes the structure or nature of networks within or between groups. We welcome papers that combine methodological sophistication or innovation with a strong focus on testing or extending existing theories, such as those on the relationship between networks, group inequality, and social integration.
(Session Organizer) Linda Zhao, University of Chicago
Big Problems, Middle-Range Theories
This session seeks to highlight research that engages creatively with important contemporary social problems—climate change, political polarization, inequality, and racism, to name just a few possibilities. The session thus responds to multiple, prominent, recent calls to ground sociological theorizing in solving real social problems (Watts 2017; Prasad 2018). Consistent with these calls, we are particularly interested in work that (1) helps to resolve theoretical incoherencies by adopting a solution-oriented approach or (2) develops and tests middle-range theories in the context of specific social problems that have seen inadequate engagement by sociologists.
(Session Organizer) Fedor A. Dokshin, University of Toronto
Section on Disability in Society
People with Disabilities as a Population with Health Disparities (Co-sponsored by Section on Medical Sociology)
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) recently designated people with disabilities as a population with health disparities. This designation is a result of disability advocacy efforts and a step toward recognizing disabled individuals as a minority group with unique health and healthcare concerns. The purpose of this co-sponsored session is to highlight innovative, sociological work that examines health disparities among disabled persons.
(Session Organizer) Kenzie Mintus, Indiana University Indianapolis
The Future of Work for Disabled Workers
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, more Americans are seeking out remote work options. Remote work (or work from home) opportunities are particularly beneficial for disabled workers. However, increasingly large companies are rolling back remote work options. As companies shift their work from home policies, demand for remote work may increase—creating competition from nondisabled workers who benefit from flexible work policies as well. The purpose of this session is to understand how current work policies will shape the future of work for disabled workers.
(Session Organizer) Kenzie Mintus, Indiana University Indianapolis
Section on Disability in Society Roundtables
This roundtable session will explore various topics related to the sociology of disability.
(Session Organizer) Kenzie Mintus, Indiana University Indianapolis
Section on Drugs and Society
Rethinking Policing and Drug Policy: Power, Surveillance, and Social Justice
This session will critically examine the intersections between drug policy, policing, and social justice. Papers will explore how law enforcement practices impact people who use drugs, focusing on surveillance, criminalization, and systemic inequality. Papers will analyze the social and political consequences of punitive drug policies, as well as alternatives such as decriminalization, community-based interventions, and harm reduction strategies. Topics may include racial and gender disparities in drug-related policing, the effects of drug law enforcement on marginalized communities, and the role of activism in challenging the status quo. Diverse methodological approaches—quantitative, qualitative, or mixed-methods—are will be discussed. This session aims to foster a conversation about the future of drug policy and policing, with a focus on promoting social justice and reducing harm.
(Session Organizer) Suzan Walters, New York University Grossman School of Medicine
Drugs, Society, and Health: Sociological Perspectives on Substance Use
This session will explore the complex social, cultural, and structural factors shaping drug use and drug-related policies. Papers will examine how drug use intersects with broader social systems such as healthcare, law enforcement, education, housing, and employment. Topics will include the social and structural drivers of drug use, the role of stigma, and racial and gender disparities in drug-related outcomes. Papers will also explore intersectionality, focusing on how categories and systems such as racism, classism, sexism, and geography influence experiences with drugs and policy responses. Contributions that utilize innovative theoretical frameworks, qualitative or quantitative methodologies, or interdisciplinary approaches will be discussed. This session aims to generate a robust dialogue on the social and structural dimensions of drug use, fostering insights that can inform more effective and equitable policies and interventions.
(Session Organizer) Suzan Walters, New York University Grossman School of Medicine
Community Responses to Drug Use: Grassroots Movements, Mutual Aid, and Harm Reduction
This session will explore the vital role of community-based responses to drug use, focusing on grassroots movements, mutual aid networks, and harm reduction initiatives. Papers will analyze how communities are mobilizing to address drug-related challenges in the absence or failure of formal institutions. Topics may include the development of local harm reduction programs, peer-led overdose prevention efforts, the impact of community organizing on drug policy, and how mutual aid networks support people who use drugs. Papers that critically examine the intersections of race, class, and geography in community responses, or that highlight innovative, bottom-up approaches to harm reduction, will be discussed. This session seeks to highlight how community-driven efforts are reshaping the landscape of drug use and policy, offering new strategies for addressing structural inequalities and promoting health and well-being.
(Session Organizer) Suzan Walters, New York University Grossman School of Medicine
Section on Economic Sociology
Economic Sociology: Open Session
This session showcases recent work in economic sociology.
(Session Organizer) Juan Pablo Pardo-Guerra, University of California-San Diego; Daniel G. Fridman, University of Texas-Austin
Recent Developments in Economic Sociology
This session covers recent developments in economic sociology.
(Session Organizer) Juan Pablo Pardo-Guerra, University of California-San Diego; Daniel G. Fridman, University of Texas-Austin
Trends in Economic Sociology
This session will include state of the art work in economic sociology
(Session Organizer) Juan Pablo Pardo-Guerra, University of California-San Diego; Daniel G. Fridman, University of Texas-Austin
Economic Sociology for the Future
This session invites submissions of research in economic sociology dealing with key challenges currently faced by global societies. We welcome work at the intersection of economic sociology and environmental sociology, political sociology, sociology of sex and gender, sociology of work, professions and employment, the sociology of race and ethnicity, and science and technology studies, with a clear focus on how understanding markets and economic institutions sheds light on problems ranging from climate change to the regulation of novel technologies.
(Session Organizer) Juan Pablo Pardo-Guerra, University of California-San Diego; Daniel G. Fridman, University of Texas-Austin
Section on Economic Sociology Roundtables
Open Call: Section on Economic Sociology
(Session Organizer) Juan Pablo Pardo-Guerra, University of California-San Diego; Daniel G. Fridman, University of Texas-Austin
Section on Environmental Sociology
State Violence and the Environment
States and their governing institutions are responsible for or complicit in many forms of environmental violence: colonial and imperial ecocide, Indigenous dispossession, war, resource extraction, neglect of public health, deregulation, policing, imprisonment, movement repression, and more. Environmental sociologists have spoken to such intersections on topics including land enclosure, climate disruption, toxic carceral environments, militarization, agricultural development, animal exploitation, environmental and food injustice, and more.
This session calls for theoretically, empirically, or methodologically driven papers that engage with state violence and the environment.
(Session Organizer) Joshua Sbicca, Colorado State University
Racial Capitalism and the Environment
Environmental sociologists have contributed to the literature on racial capitalism to explain the connections between the dehumanizing production of racial differences that divide workers, extract profits, and manage and hide socioecological precarity and a host of environmental problems. Topics of research include environmental and food injustice, climate change, fossil fuel development, agricultural modernization, state formation, plantation logics, green gentrification, labor, and more.
This session calls for theoretically, empirically, or methodologically driven papers that engage with racial capitalism and the environment.
(Session Organizer) Joshua Sbicca, Colorado State University
Environmental Movements and Counter Movements
A range of environmental movements want transformative action that alters institutions, organizations, communities, and/or interpersonal relations. Examples include abolitionist, anti/decolonial, degrowth, ecofeminist, ecoqueer, ecoliberation, environmental and food justice, health, Indigenous sovereignty, and other movements. At the same time, there are counter movements that complicate the social change terrain including conservative, authoritarian populist, denialist, ecofascist, and other right-wing political formations. Environmental sociologists have investigated the operations and outcomes of environmental movements and counter movements across the world, throughout history, and at a variety of scales.
This session calls for theoretically, empirically, or methodologically driven papers that engage with environmental movements and/or counter movements.
(Session Organizer) Joshua Sbicca, Colorado State University
Novel Approaches to Environmental Sociology
Environmental sociology is an actively evolving field of research and action. Scholarship has spanned the transnational to the local, interrogating diverse systems, institutions, organizations, spaces, and ecologies, commonly to address difficult socioecological problems. What are environmental sociologists doing now to push the field in more innovative directions? How might we best rise to the challenges of the moment to ask and answer emergent questions?
This session calls for theoretically, empirically, or methodologically driven papers offering novel approaches to the field of environmental sociology. Submissions engaging transdisciplinary scholarship are welcomed.
(Session Organizer) Joshua Sbicca, Colorado State University
Section on Environmental Sociology Roundtables
This session invites environmental sociology research papers that address topics outside the areas featured in the four section paper sessions. A presider will help facilitate constructive dialogue among participants about the accepted papers, which will cohere around common themes in each roundtable.
(Session Organizer) Joshua Sbicca, Colorado State University
Section on Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis
New Directions in Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis
In this session, we invite theoretical and/or empirical papers that focus on potential directions for ethnomethodology and/or conversation analysis.
(Session Organizer) Satomi Kuroshima, Tamagawa University; Kevin A. Whitehead, University of California-Santa Barbara
Research in Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis
In this session, we invite papers reporting current ethnomethodological and/or conversation analytic research.
(Session Organizer) Satomi Kuroshima, Tamagawa University; Kevin A. Whitehead, University of California-Santa Barbara
Section on Global and Transnational Sociology
Transnational Solidarities for Racial Justice
This panel aims to understand the ideas, structures, and forces shaping transnational solidarity for racial justice. What are the possibilities and challenges for collective solidarity that traverses borders? How are acts of solidarity tied to or inspired by other struggles across space and time? What are the blindspots or pitfalls of solidarity, as well as its emancipatory possibilities? How do class, race, sexuality, citizenship, and geopolitical contexts shape these politics? We invite papers that pursue global and transnational approaches to understanding struggles for racial and ethnic justice. This may include but is not limited to transnational social movements and the ways ideas and tactics have emerged, traveled, and reverberated across global social space. We particularly welcome papers that engage cases and scholars from outside the Global North/North Atlantic.
(Session Organizer) Katherine Jensen, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Zophia Edwards, Johns Hopkins University
Global and Transnational Sociology of Climate Change
The sociology of climate change is overdue for a global and transnational turn. The majority of the historic stock of carbon emissions currently warming the atmosphere originated in so-called “Global North” countries while the majority of the current flow of carbon emissions currently entering the atmosphere originates in the so-called “Global South.” Attempts to both mitigate these emissions and adapt to their effects are shaped by social and political inequalities long at the heart of the sociological project. At the same time, sociology needs to look outwards to generate insights that can speak across the social and physical sciences, in order to contribute to a more sociologically informed, interdisciplinary climate science. This panel will feature work that aims to do so by engaging with global and transnational dimensions of the ultimate planetary dilemma of climate change. This includes research that compares across nations and / or elucidates processes that are beyond the scale of nations, including global institutions, transnational movements, value chains, and other social, economic, and cultural formations.
(Session Organizer) Benjamin Bradlow, Princeton University
Section on Global and Transnational Sociology Roundtables
Open Call: Section on Global and Transnational Sociology Roundtables
(Session Organizer) Jack Jin Gary Lee, New School for Social Research
Section on History of Sociology and Social Thought
Open Call: Section on History of Sociology and Social Thought Paper Sessions
The History of Sociology and Social Thought section is issuing an open call for papers that focus on central themes and developments in the history of sociology, as a discipline, and in the broader history of reflection on the “social” dimension of human life. We hope to showcase the high quality of cultural and scientific insights that are possible through systematic and sustained historical reflection on sociology, as a discipline and also a specific type of social thought. We are particularly interested in papers that focus, in one way or another, and from a diverse array of perspectives, on the role of value-commitments in the history of sociology. Disputes about the place of value-commitments in sociology are active today, but they run like a red thread through the history of sociology, leading back to the origins of the discipline, and beyond. What, if anything, has changed today? Are new methods of analysis possible to enable new insights into the role(s) of politics and political commitments in sociology? Is the discipline more politicized today, and, if so, what does this say about the possibilities for sociology as a social “science”? We welcome papers on this theme, but we welcome all papers exploring the potential of historical analysis to enable new insights into the development of sociology as a university-based discipline. We are organizing two paper sessions, one 90-minute session and one 60-minute session. The 60-minute session will follow the section’s business meeting.
(Session Organizer) Laura R. Ford, Faulkner University
Section on Inequality, Poverty, and Mobility
Inequality
This is one of the annually recurring IPM section sessions with a focus on inequality broadly conceived.
(Session Organizer) Angelina Grigoryeva, University of Toronto
Poverty
This is one of the annually recurring IPM section sessions with a focus on poverty broadly conceived.
(Session Organizer) Zachary Parolin, Bocconi University
Mobility
This is one of the annually recurring IPM section sessions with a focus on social mobility broadly conceived.
(Session Organizer) Jessi Streib, Duke University
Wealth
New research on wealth / net worth / debt
(Session Organizer) Joe LaBriola, University of Michigan
Section on Inequality, Poverty, and Mobility Roundtables
The IPM roundtable session will be open to all section-relevant topics
(Session Organizer) Steven Elias Alvarado, University of Notre Dame
Section on International Migration
MENA Global Migration and Identities
Migration from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region to the U.S. has a long history, affected by voluntary movements and forced displacement, but has not been always incorporated in sociology of migration. This session explores dynamics regarding migration to and from the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA) globally, as well as various aspects of identity formation and integration among MENA migrants and their descendants globally as well as in the U.S. Papers examining identity within this community through class, race, ethnicity, gender, belonging, religion, intergenerational differences, health, and well-being are welcomed. Additionally, submissions that explore the historical roots of MENA diasporas in the region and their political involvement and participation are encouraged. One aim of this session is to foster a deeper understanding of the MENA diaspora and its members, as well as its impact on existing migration dynamics.
(Session Organizer) Jean Beaman, CUNY Graduate Center; Ayse Perihan Kirkic, Florida International University
Right-Wing Politics, Mobilities, and Immigrant Conservatism (Co-sponsored by Section on Political Sociology)
The global rise of populist autocracies in the last decade has pushed people to leave their countries to escape inauspicious economic conditions and infringement of civil and political rights. At the same time, from traditional countries of immigration in North America and Europe to new destinations in the global South, xenophobic sentiments have increasingly become the centerpiece of rightwing political parties and social movements. Paradoxically, many settled immigrants and their second-generation children have embraced the rhetoric of the right, often positioning themselves as “deserving” of citizenship compared to the new wave of asylum seekers. They have supported conservative parties and violent far-right groups that often blame refugees and undocumented immigrants for the state’s failure in addressing precarious employment, housing shortage, and criminal activities. They have joined campaigns to dismantle policies and practices that aim to help marginalized groups, to which they have also benefited in the past. Lastly, while some immigrants are liberal vis-a-vis politics in their countries of settlement due to their minority status, they may mobilize in support of majoritarian nationalists in their homelands that are openly hateful and violent toward minorities. How do we make sense of these contradictions? This panel invites innovative work that examines the various ways that immigration and rightwing politics intersect and engages with questions of mobility, belonging, and power in this post-neoliberal global political economy.
(Session Organizer) Jesse Yeh, Northwestern University; Sharon Quinsaat, Grinnell College
Environment, Climate Change, and the Management of Mobility
This panel invites scholars to explore the multifaceted relationships between environment, climate change, and mobility. Potential topics include, but are not limited to, the impacts of climate change on human and nonhuman migrations, the politics and ethics of measuring and labelling climate displacement, the dynamics and outcomes of managed retreat or resettlement schemes, the production and circulation of knowledge around environmental migration, or studies of multispecies, intersectional, and transnational solidarities for mobility and environmental justice. Papers may also consider how environmental factors and discourses shape the governance of migration, or how migration management strategies influence socio-environmental outcomes. This session aims to advance emerging research at the intersection of environmental studies, migration studies, and critical approaches to territory, borders, and the politics of belonging. We welcome interdisciplinary and comparative perspectives that shed new light on the complexities of environmental migration and mobility on a warming planet.
(Session Organizer) Jake Watson, University of California-San Diego
Section on International Migration Roundtables
Roundtable session for International Migration Section
(Session Organizer) Brenda Gambol, University of Texas at Dallas; Tiffany Joyce Huang, Ohio State University
Section on Labor and Labor Movements
Open Call: Labor and Labor Movements Paper Session
Open call for submissions to the Labor and Labor Movements paper session.
(Session Organizer) Jeffrey J. Sallaz, University of Arizona; Caitlin R. Fox-Hodess, University of Sheffield; Gretchen Purser, Syracuse University; Andrew Wolf, Cornell University; L. Larry Liu, Morgan State University
Section on Labor and Labor Movements Roundtables
Open call for papers to the Labor and Labor Movements Round table panel.
(Session Organizer) Jeffrey J. Sallaz, University of Arizona; Caitlin R. Fox-Hodess, University of Sheffield; Gretchen Purser, Syracuse University; Andrew Wolf, Cornell University; L. Larry Liu, Morgan State University
Section on Latina/o Sociology
Towards an Unruly Latinx Sociology
This session–which builds on themes from a forthcoming special issue also titled Towards and Unruly Latinx Sociology– invites submissions that speak to what we consider to be an unruly Latinx sociology. We conceptualize unruliness as something not easily defined, not easily characterized within current paradigms, and transcendent of disciplinary binds. An unruly Latinx sociology is methodologically and theoretically innovative and creative. Unruly Latinx sociology is our attempt to foreground new directions in the field. We welcome submissions that challenge traditional paradigms used to study Latinx populations. We seek contributions that question how empire, racial capitalism, heteropatriarchy, carcerality, anti-Indigeneity, and anti-Blackness have shaped processes related to Latinx experiences, identities, and categories. What does a Latinx sociology that centers power and systems of oppression look like? We also welcome submissions centered on methodology and teaching related to Latinx sociology. Where can Latinx Sociology go if we pay attention to how systems of oppression have been reproduced in research and teaching? We also invite submissions that contend with pedagogy and curriculum development for Latinx Sociology, community rooted research and practice in Latinx communities, or papers that interrogate the epistemological bases of conducting research on/with Latinx populations.
(Session Organizer) Uriel Serrano, University of Southern California; Rocío R. García, Arizona State University-Tempe
Latinos in Comparative Places
This session invites submissions that center place and comparison in Latinidad. We imagine the idea of place to be both physical and symbolic, with papers that examine Latinxs across different geographical regions or across distinct social locations (i.e. generation, class, political ideology). Indeed, today Latinos are located in a variety of “places” from the Great Plains to the sandwich generation to the far-right. This session will center this diversity through comparison to better understand the ways that Latinxs are re-shaping ideas about place in the US.
(Session Organizer) Cristian Alberto Doña Reveco, University of Nebraska-Omaha; Francisco Lara-Garcia, Hofstra University
Section on Latina/o Sociology Roundtables
Open Session Round tables for LatSoc section
(Session Organizer) Tomas E. Encarnacion, U.S. Census Bureau; Luis E. Tenorio, University of California-Berkeley
Section on Marxist Sociology
Contributions to Marxist Sociology
Papers are invited which employ or build upon Marxist theory to address important sociological questions.
(Session Organizer) Jeff Goodwin, New York University
Contributions to Black Marxism
Papers are invited which use or discuss Black Marxist theory, including the work of W.E.B. Du Bois, C.L.R. James, Oliver Cromwell Cox, Claudia Jones, Frantz Fanon, Walter Rodney, and Stuart Hall.
(Session Organizer) Jeff Goodwin, New York University
Section on Marxist Sociology Roundtables
Papers are invited which use or discuss Marxist theory.
(Session Organizer) Zachary Levenson, Florida International University
Section on Mathematical Sociology
Advancing Mathematical and Computational Research in Social Psychology (Co-sponsored by Section on Social Psychology)
We seek papers for a joint session that extends the rich collaboration between the Mathematical Sociology and Social Psychology sections. We are specifically interested in papers that build, extend, or apply computational or mathematical models to social psychological questions. This may involve bringing new tools to investigate long-standing theoretical questions or using mathematical or computational methods to advance social psychological theory. We welcome papers across any area of social psychology and using a wide range of methods including (but not limited to) network analysis, natural language processing, agent-based models, machine learning, and mathematical modeling.
(Session Organizer) David R. Schaefer, University of California-Irvine
Section on Mathematical Sociology Flash Talks
This is not your typical paper session: this is the Mathematical Sociology Flash Talk Session! Join us for multiple, brief, and snappy renditions of cutting-edge work that uses mathematics, social network analysis, and/or computational methods to advance sociological knowledge. Projects making theoretical, empirical, and/or methodological advances are all welcome for this session. Regardless of subject, we ask and expect that each presenter will do their very best to be fast, informative, and engaging! After these brief presentations, presenters will “break out” for Q&A and interaction roundtable discussions.
(Session Organizer) Matthew E. Brashears, University of South Carolina-Columbia; Neha Gondal, Boston University
Co-sponsored session with Section on Methodology; See session details under the Section on Methodology section.
Co-sponsored session with Section on Sociology of Culture; See session details under the Section on Sociology of Culture section.
Section on Medical Sociology
Health Disparities and the Medicalization of Population Health
It has been almost 50 years since McKinlay and McKinlay (1977) first wrote about the questionable contribution of medical measures to the decline of mortality in the US, and yet we continue to ask similar questions about the perils of medicalization for population health and health equity (Lantz 2023; Kindig 2020). For this panel we invite papers that consider the interface of population health, medicalization, and medical sociology. How can medical sociology be at the cutting edge of health disparities research?
(Session Organizer) Danielle Raudenbush, University of California-San Diego
Exciting New Medical Sociology that Everyone Should Know About
We invite papers that speak to, broadly defined, exciting new sociology that everyone should know about! This may include novel substantive questions, methodological innovations, cutting edge theoretical developments, creative dissemination strategies, or other important developments that should be shared within our field. We especially welcome contributions from junior scholars, underrepresented scholars, and research about underrepresented populations.
(Session Organizer) Alexandra E. Brewer, University of Southern California
Is there a Doctor in the House? Updating the Medical Sociology Agenda around Doctoring
Studies of doctoring have a long tradition in medical sociology, from medical education to doctor-patient interaction, to changes in healthcare. Some claim doctors are disappearing while others say they will never, even while we acknowledge their changed role and the rise of engaged patients, marketization, and AI. How can medical sociology be at the cutting edge of laying out an agenda for the next 20 years of research on doctoring?
(Session Organizer) Tania M. Jenkins, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
Racialized Health Injustice
Racialization is a critical concept for understanding racial differences in health. In this session we invite papers that explore how sociology can expand our knowledge of health and health disparities when we approach racialization as a process as opposed to strictly a demographic characteristic of individuals.
(Session Organizer) Tyson H. Brown, Duke University
Section on Medical Sociology Roundtables
We welcome presenters on all topics to a lively discussion.
(Session Organizer) Jane Schlapkohl VanHeuvelen, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities; Matt Grace, Hamilton College
Co-sponsored session with Section on Disability in Society; See session details under the Section on Disability in Society section.
Section on Methodology
New Insights from Multiple Methods and Measures
Many researchers are in the fortunate position to have the skill set and data needed to use multiple methodological approaches and/or measures in their study. Different methods offer opportunities to gather evidence to make different types of claims and to confirm the robustness of sociological theories, especially when multiple methods yield consistent results. Divergent results across methods, however, can—and often do—prompt deeper reflection, revisits of the literature, and theorizing, helping us understand a sociological phenomenon more deeply. This session welcomes submissions of methodological papers about designing studies to intentionally mix methods and measures, and also empirical applications that demonstrate the insights gained from using multiple methods or measures.
(Session Organizer) Emily Rauscher, Brown University; Michael D. M. Bader, Johns Hopkins University / School of Arts & Sciences
Machine Learning and Classical Statistical Approaches: Trade-offs, Integration, and Debate (Co-sponsored by Section on Mathematical Sociology)
Machine Learning is a research approach that is both inductive and deductive and plays an important complementary role in improving model goodness of fit, revealing valid and significant hidden patterns in data, identifying nonlinear and non-additive effects, providing insights into data developments, methods, and theory, and enriching scientific discovery. When the explicit model structure is unclear and algorithms with a good performance are difficult to attain, machine learning builds models and algorithms by learning and improving from data. This section welcomes the following research that: 1) demonstrates the implications of this new paradigm to data, methods, and theory development, or 2) compares machine learning with the classical approach of parameter estimation regressions, or 3) incorporates predictive modeling to produce improved models that combine explanation and prediction.
(Session Organizer) Xiaoling Shu, University of California-Davis
Section on Organizations, Occupations, and Work
Informal and Unregulated Economies
We invite paper submissions under the topic of informal and unregulated economies, including studies that examine migrant and transnational dynamics.
(Session Organizer) Patricia Sarah Ward, Bielefeld University; Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, Princeton University
Organizations
We invite paper submissions under the broad topic of organizations, including studies that assess the implications of their structures, norms, policies, and practices.
(Session Organizer) Elizabeth A. Armstrong, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor; Matthew Clair, Stanford University
Professions and Occupations
We invite paper submissions on the broad topic of professions and occupations, including studies that focus on their emergence, evolution, and implications.
(Session Organizer) Nicholas Joseph Occhiuto, Hunter College — CUNY; Alexandrea J. Ravenelle, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
Gender Inequality in Organizations
We invite paper submissions under the topic of gender inequality in organizations.
(Session Organizer) Sharla N. Alegria, University of Toronto; Alexandra Kalev, Tel-Aviv University
Labor Markets
We invite paper submissions under the broad topic of labor markets, including studies that examine their structures, dynamics, and consequences.
(Session Organizer) Koji Chavez, Indiana University-Bloomington; Steve McDonald, North Carolina State University
The Future of Work
We invite paper submission under the broad topic of the future of work.
(Session Organizer) Steven Vallas, Northeastern University; Angèle Christin, Stanford University
Section on Organizations, Occupations, and Work Roundtables
Open Call: Section on Organizations, Occupations, and Work Refereed Roundtables
(Session Organizer) Michel Anteby, Boston University; Sigrid Willa Luhr, University of Illinois-Chicago
Co-sponsored session with Section on Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology; See session details under the Section on Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology section.
Section on Peace, War, and Social Conflict
Open Session on Issues in Peace, War and Social Conflict
Peace, War, and Social Conflict is a vibrant and diverse area of study – bridging perspectives across multiple subfields and styles of sociological inquiry. We invite and encourage submissions dealing with any topic of interest to scholars of Peace, War, and Social Conflict for this session. New advances of substantive, theoretical, and/or methodological concerns are all encouraged.
(Session Organizer) Jeffrey Hass, University of Richmond; Andrew P. Davis, North Carolina State University
Section on Peace, War, and Social Conflict Roundtables
Roundtable sessions for the Peace, War, and Social Conflict Section
(Session Organizer) Jeffrey Hass, University of Richmond; Andrew P. Davis, North Carolina State University
Section on Political Economy of the World-System
Political Economy of the World-System (PEWS) Open Call for Papers
This is an open call for sessions and papers to be presented at the August 2025 meetings of the Section on Political Economy of the World-Systems (PEWS). We welcome submissions on a broad range of topics that critically examine the capitalist world-economy and other historical social systems from global and/or comparative-historical perspectives. We particularly encourage work grounded in the intellectual traditions of anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist analyses, especially those emerging from decolonization struggles and perspectives from the Global South. Papers may engage with world-systemic dynamics and explore intersections of political economy with race, gender, class, imperialism, neo-colonialism, and environmental issues. Submissions that challenge disciplinary boundaries and embrace diverse theoretical, methodological, and epistemological approaches are highly encouraged. Our goal is to foster a vibrant exchange of ideas among scholars, activists, and educators from both the Global North and Global South.
(Session Organizer) Sahan Savas Karatasli, University of North Carolina-Greensboro
Section on Political Economy of the World-System Roundtables
The Section on Political Economy of the World-Systems (PEWS) invites members to submit papers for inclusion in section roundtables at the ASA annual meeting. Submissions are welcome on a wide range of topics that align with the critical study of the capitalist world-economy and other historical social systems. We encourage work that draws from the intellectual tradition of anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist analyses, particularly those rooted in struggles for decolonization and perspectives from the Global South. Papers may engage with world-systemic dynamics and explore intersections of political economy with race, gender, class, imperialism, neo-colonialism, and environmental issues. Submissions that challenge disciplinary boundaries and incorporate diverse theoretical, methodological, and epistemological approaches are strongly encouraged. We aim to foster rich intellectual exchange among scholars, activists, and educators from both the Global North and Global South.
(Session Organizer) Umaima Miraj, University of Toronto
Section on Political Sociology
Section on Political Sociology Open Paper Sessions
The Political Sociology Council has decided to run an OPEN CALL FOR PAPERS for our sessions at the 2025 ASA Annual Conference. All submissions will be reviewed for inclusion on our panels or on roundtables and sorted into thematic sessions after the submission deadline.
All papers that are not selected to be presented in a session will be considered for inclusion in our roundtables. If you would prefer only to be included in a roundtable session, please submit your paper directly to the roundtables.
We look forward to reviewing your submissions! –2025 Program Committee (Dana [chair], Josh [chair-elect], Caroline [past-chair], Nick [Sec/Treasurer], and Daniel Laurison).
(Session Organizer) Dana R. Fisher, American University; Daniel Laurison, Swarthmore College; Caroline W. Lee, Lafayette College; Josh Pacewicz, Brown University; Nicholas Joseph Occhiuto, Hunter College — CUNY
Section on Political Sociology Roundtables
The political sociology roundtables provide a space to discuss works-in-progress and papers under review. The session will take place for 60 minutes and will be followed by our business meeting.
(Session Organizer) Nicholas Joseph Occhiuto, Hunter College — CUNY
Co-sponsored session with Section on International Migration; See session details under the Section on International Migration section.
Co-sponsored session with Section on Science, Knowledge, and Technology; See session details under the Section on Science, Knowledge, and Technology section.
Section on Race, Gender, and Class
Feminist and Critical Complicities, Injustices, and Culture (Co-sponsored by Section on Sociology of Culture)
As feminist and critical race scholars, we are all complicit in the entrenched inequities of the academy. For those of us based in the US and pay taxes, we are also complicit in the atrocities committed and supported by the US. This panel asks: what are the specific cultural practices, meanings, and toolkits that people – perhaps unwittingly – enact and use in ways that further entrenched patterns of inequities? That is, we know that systems of domination and oppression are the foundation of everyday life. In what ways do institutions, organizations, interlocutors, and/or we as scholars maintain the status quo and are complicit in perpetuating injustices? This panel is open to papers drawing on any type of data and methodology that pinpoints to cultural dimensions of how systems of oppression and domination are maintained.
(Session Organizer) Victoria Reyes, University of California-Riverside
The Sociology of Black Girlhood Studies
This panel seeks to explore the Black girlhood scholarship taking place within the discipline of sociology. In building from Joyce Ladner’s groundbreaking research, she identified Black girls’ experiences of autonomy and liberation were necessary to explore within the discipline. In building from Ladner’s scholarship, this panel seeks to center the experiences of Black girls and Black girlhood within sociological research by early career scholars. We seek to explore liberation and autonomy through the elements of joy and play. Questions this panel will consider include: How are Black girls experiencing liberation? What are the ways that joy is displayed in the lives of Black girls? Where is autonomy illustrated in the lives of Black girls?
(Session Organizer) Lisa Covington, Brown University
Speculations
This panel invites papers that are critical speculations in their broadest meaning. We seek papers that take risks, ask provocative questions, deploy unorthodox methodologies, think creatively with their sources, and draw on heretical frameworks which exceed the typical boundaries of social scientific research on race, gender, and class. Rather than adding to the mountains of existing data on marginalization and inequality, we invite panelists who yearn for new ways of carrying out the work we do: who seek not merely to document dying but presence and ways of living, who pursue wonder in the face of cynicism, who are experimenting creatively with scientific experiments, and who are eager to undiscipline sociology’s strict disciplinarity.
(Session Organizer) Freeden Blume Oeur, Tufts University
Witnessing the Violences in and of Empire
Empire is intertwined with multi-scalar violences, and people within the center and peripheries of its shadows are complicit. From the shutting down of protests around the world, the firing, doxing, and ruining – and at times, taking the lives – of intellectuals, and the apathy of war to mass murders, destruction of cultures, infrastructures and knowledges, and diplomatic ties and aid to imperial cores, imperial violences invade every aspect of life. This panel interrogates the complicities required for empire to flourish. Drawing on thinkers ranging from James Baldwin, June Jordan, Mahmoud Darwish, Stuart Hall, Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian and more, speakers will use the current moments we are witnessing, linking it to historical precedents and raising questions regarding the role of global racisms, genocides, gender and sexuality, activisms, transnational (im)mobilities etc. to interrogate what lurks in the shadows of empire.
(Session Organizer) Ghassan Moussawi, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Queer of Color Critique and Sociology
Queer of color critique offers a plethora of interdisciplinary scholarship, providing sociologists with critical insights relevant to areas of sociological inquiry. These areas include, but are not limited to, debates surrounding gendered racism, empire, racial capitalism, and normativity. This session aims to bring together participants who engage with queer of color critique, broadly construed, to make theoretical or methodological interventions in sociology. In other words, what does queer of color critique offer us that other theoretical perspectives do not? We invite participants from across sociological subfields who employ qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methodological approaches in their research, with keen attention to intersectionality. We especially welcome submissions from scholars working on the Global South or who foreground minoritized communities’ experiences, such as Black, Indigenous, and other people of color (BIPOC), working-class, and LGBTQ+ communities.
(Session Organizer) Miguel Arturo Avalos, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Section on Race, Gender, and Class Roundtables
Open Call: Section on Race, Gender, and Class Roundtables
(Session Organizer) Ghassan Moussawi, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Jessennya Hernandez, California State University, Northridge
Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities
White Collar, Blue Collar, Raced Collars: Racialized Work Spaces
We invite papers in this session that address the relationship between racialized workplaces, racialized work, and the multiple mechanisms and scales of racial capitalism. Racialized work and labor formations have historically evolved, are rooted in racialized places and geographies, and intersect with other markers of difference. Papers that speak to all the ways racialized work is produced are encouraged.
(Session Organizer) Marisela Martinez-Cola, Morehouse College; Alford A. Young, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor; Michelle Marie Christian, University of Tennessee-Knoxville
Targeting Schools, Policing Students, and Protecting Insurgent Knowledges
Over the last four years schools and our education systems have emerged as sites of struggle over anti-racist curriculum, DEI initiatives, and affirmative action policies. We have also seen new forms of policing in schools and universities: from draconian policies in the name of school safety to challenging and targeting student protests. This session invites papers on all topics related to the new and recurring ways our schools are places of discipline and control but also provide opportunities for racial emancipatory freedoms and insurgent knowledges.
(Session Organizer) Daniel Ray Morrison, University of Alabama in Huntsville; Kay Sarai Varela, Arizona State University
Shifting Racial Boundaries and Politics
This session examines the evolving nature of ethnoracial boundaries in the United States and their sociopolitical implications. We welcome papers that explore racial dynamics in the context of new immigrant groups and asylum-seekers arriving in segregated cities, revealing opportunities for racial solidarity and tensions. Papers that explore changing understandings of race—such as the latest Census categories —are also encouraged. We also welcome research on how shifting racial boundaries shape political identities and policy preferences.
(Session Organizer) Denia Garcia, University of Wisconsin-Madison
The Racial Politics of Joy
This session invites papers to address the intersection of race, racism, and joy, or the racial politics of joy. For example, how do scholars and educators color who study race and racism cultivate everyday practices of joy in hostile environments? How is joy cultivated by racialized communities more broadly as forms of resistance to everyday and systemic forms of racial inequality? Or how do various forms of racialized and racist enjoyment (e.g. racist jokes, memes, ridicule) take shape across social and organizational contexts, from media and everyday settings, to the criminal justice system, the political arena, or in the context of war or genocide? The session seeks papers that critically examine the intersection of race, racism and joy or the racial politics of joy (e.g. amusement, enjoyment, humor), and the larger social and racial implications of these and other forms of racialized enjoyment.
(Session Organizer) Maria Isabel Ayala, Michigan State University; Raúl Pérez, University of La Verne
Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities Roundtables
We welcome all papers related to race, ethnicity, racism, anti-racism, and all the ways race organizes and shapes social life.
(Session Organizer) Michelle Marie Christian, University of Tennessee-Knoxville
Co-sponsored session with the Family Section; See session details under Family Section.
Section on Science, Knowledge, and Technology
Challenging epistemic institutions: Unruly knowledge, outlaw technology, and fringe-mainstream relations
We live in epistemically challenged, and challenging, times. The status of various forms of knowledge continues to be contested, as many social actors compete for epistemic authority. Institutions of knowledge production are underfunded and under suspicion. Alternative institutions, peer-to-peer networks, conspiracy communities and counter-knowledges are rife. Even amongst public institutions, dissenting voices seek to trouble the status quo. Since its earliest days, SKAT inquiry has addressed questions of lay expertise, non-knowledges, pseudo-sciences, alternative knowledge systems, and other heterogeneous constitutions of social facts. Today’s political context inspires a return to these core questions with fresh empirical and theoretical eyes. How do individual and collective actors manage the tension between mainstream and fringe ideas, ways of knowing, and other technoscientific constellations, and what can we learn through an examination of these practices?
This session invites empirically and theoretically engaged work that investigates defiant, oppositional, unruly forms of knowledge, undisciplined technologies, and their relation to more mainstream organizations and institutions. We also welcome work that contests these categories, tracking how powerful groups create or sustain unruly or deviant forms of knowledge and/or technologies. Projects may be contemporary or historical. Global, transnational, and comparative research is encouraged. Potential topics include but are not limited to: contested knowledges in science, technology, and/or medicine; evasive or alternative technologies; resistance to knowledge-making; creative forms of un-making knowledge and cultivating ignorance; citizen science/lay science; scientist-led movements of dissent maker and DIY communities of scientific and technological practice; open technology; democratic participation and inclusion; activism.
(Session Organizer) Janet Vertesi, Princeton University; Daniel Ray Morrison, University of Alabama in Huntsville
New Directions and Emerging Studies of Politics in Science and Technology: Changes in Governance, Political Economy, Labor, and Work (Co-sponsored by Section on Political Sociology)
Studies of political economy are experiencing a revival across sociology, with researchers shedding new light on interactions and contestations between capital, labor, and state actors. Broadly, this scholarship explains how social actors secure and institutionalize power over agendas, resources, and practices. While sociologists of science, knowledge, and technology have historically attended to such dynamics at the local, national, and global levels, recent research and events have revitalized our understanding of the interplay between science, technology, the economy, and the state across locales, scales, and historical periods.
This session builds on this renewed interest and invites work that bridges the study of political economy (broadly construed) with analyses of science, knowledge, and technology. Potential topics include, but are not limited to: how public and private actors shape the governance of science and technology; how structures of capital (e.g. public funding, venture capital, private equity) impact processes of scientific discovery or technological innovation; how labor movements influence technology development and change; and how workers reshape, resist, or adopt technologies of management.
(Session Organizer) Benjamin Shestakofsky, University of Pennsylvania; Mariana Craciun, Tulane University; Janet Vertesi, Princeton University
Sociology of Neuroscience and Neurotechnology
George H W Bush declared 1990 to 1999 the “Decade of the Brain” with the goal of enhancing “public awareness of the benefits to be derived from brain research”. However, nearly 35 years later, our understanding of the brain through neuroscience and neurotechnology remains elusive. At the same time the implications of the knowledge production and application of new innovations centered on the brain are impacting society from how we diagnose, treat, and experience conditions associated with the brain to the ways in which neuroscience and technology perpetuate social inequalities or define what constitutes normality and pathology.
The tools of sociology of science and technology offer opportunities to critically interrogate all matters related to the brain, neuroscience, and neurotechnology. We invite empirical and theoretical papers that investigate their social, political, economic, and cultural implications—ranging from institutions to neurons and spanning topics from medical therapeutics to surveillance.
Potential topics include but are not limited to: the political economy of neuroscience, neurotechnology, and innovation; studies of neurology, neuroscientists, and neurotherapies; classification and diagnosis; racism, sexism, and justice in research practice; sensors, monitoring, and social control in the neurosciences; social inequalities in relation to neuroscience; as well as neuroscience’s role in mental health discourse. We particularly encourage submissions that explore how neurotechnologies impact marginalized communities, examine the influence of neuroscience on public policy, and discuss the intersections between neuroscience and contemporary discourses surrounding artificial intelligence.
(Session Organizer) Jennifer S. Singh, Georgia Institute of Technology; Oliver E. Rollins, Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Daniel Ray Morrison, University of Alabama in Huntsville; Torsten H. Voigt, RWTH Aachen University; Janet Vertesi, Princeton University
Liberating, decolonizing, and queering science, knowledge, and technology
The production and application of scientific knowledge and technology have long been shaped by dominant cultural, political, and economic forces. This session explores critical approaches that seek to liberate, decolonize, crip and queer science, knowledge, and technology. By challenging traditional power structures and epistemologies, these perspectives aim to create more inclusive, equitable, and diverse frameworks for understanding and engaging with the world around us. We invite empirical and theoretical papers that examine how marginalized voices, indigenous knowledge systems, disability theories and lived experiences, and queer perspectives can transform scientific and medical practices, technological innovations, and knowledge production.
Potential topics include but are not limited to: decolonial approaches to scientific research and education; the intersections of disability studies and SKAT; queer theory in STEM fields; Indigenous knowledge systems; feminist and intersectional critiques of technology design and implementation; the role of activism in shaping technoscientific agendas; alternative epistemologies and methodologies in knowledge production; challenging heteronormative, ableist, and cisnormative assumptions in science, technology, or medicine; the impact of colonialism on global scientific discourse; and strategies for creating more inclusive and diverse scientific communities.
(Session Organizer) Martine Lappe, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo; Kate Elizabeth Burrows, National Coalition of Independent Scholars; Janet Vertesi, Princeton University
Section on Science, Knowledge, and Technology Roundtables
We invite participation among our section’s membership in our roundtables. Briefly present a paper and receive feedback from your SKAT peers!
New this year: early stage Work-In-Progress feedback roundtables. Submit your early stage thinking about a fieldsite or research topic and get feedback on how best to accomplish the research.
(Session Organizer) Janet Vertesi, Princeton University
Section on Social Psychology
Open Topics in Social Psychology
This session is for all topics in sociological social psychology research.
(Session Organizer) Robert Freeland, Appalachian State University
Computational Approaches to Culture and Cognition
This session is dedicated to novel approaches that draw on computer science, artificial intelligence, or natural language processing to advance our understanding of cultural schemas, categories, attitudes, values, identities, public and personal culture, or other cultural and social psychological topics that fall under the broad umbrella of “culture and cognition.”
(Session Organizer) Andrei G. Boutyline, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
Joint Roundtables: Section on Social Psychology and Section on Sociology of Emotions
Open topics in social psychology or sociology of emotions.
(Session Organizer) Laura Aufderheide Brashears, University of South Carolina; Alison J. Bianchi, University of Iowa
Co-sponsored session with Section on Mathematical Sociology; See session details under the Section on Mathematical Sociology section.
Section on Sociological Practice and Public Sociology
“Doing Public Sociology”: Sociological Practice in the Community
This session will acquaint the audience with how settings outside academia can involve meaningful and creative work. Faculty and students often find themselves at a loss when asked to think about what sociologists do outside a campus environment. The truth is that this work is complex and varied. This session focuses on work done by those engaging in public and applied sociology in myriad settings. Sociologists in various stages of their careers engaging in public sociology and sociological practice are encouraged to submit their work for presentation.
(Session Organizer) Shirley A. Jackson, Portland State University
Whose Story and Whose Project?: Ethical Issues and Considerations in Research Collaborations
Researchers are often in the position of collecting and sharing data. This opens up ethical questions. Should a white researcher, for example, tell the stories of her Arab research participants? Whose story is it? And who gets to tell it? And what do data-sharing agreements look like through the lens of public sociology? This session helps to unpack those difficult questions as researchers navigate community-based work, NIH data-sharing agreements, and much more.
(Session Organizer) Shirley A. Jackson, Portland State University
Section on Sociological Practice and Public Sociology Roundtables
Roundtables are opportunities to present work on pressing issues in sociological practice settings, ethical issues working with community organizations or government agencies, research findings, and delving into job prospects outside academia.
(Session Organizer) Shirley A. Jackson, Portland State University
Section on Sociology of Body and Embodiment
Section on Sociology of Body and Embodiment: Open Session
The Section on the Sociology of Body and Embodiment welcomes papers on any topic that advances scholarly understanding of bodies and/or embodiment in society.
(Session Organizer) Apryl A. Williams, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor; Danielle Bessett, University of Cincinnati
Section on Sociology of Body and Embodiment Roundtables
This session features papers dealing with questions of the body and embodiment in society.
(Session Organizer) Robyn Rebecca Rowe, CUNY; (Session Organizer) Lauren M. Fishel, University of Oklahoma
Section on Sociology of Consumers and Consumption
Consuming Authenticity: Blurring Distinctions across Work and Play
In today’s neoliberal economy, the line between work and ‘free time’ has become increasingly blurred. Platforms like social media, gig work apps, and streaming services can transform what was once considered free time into commodified activities. Beyond this, the line has become blurred between “expertise” and “opinion,” both in mass media and on social media. This session invites papers that explore the commodification of free time and how it impacts consumer behavior, identity, and well-being. The session also looks to explore the sociological implications of these shifts, including how labor, leisure, and consumption intersect and how they reflect larger changes in work and market dynamics. Furthermore, the session invites papers examining how such new technology-driven cultural patterns influence consumption and individual autonomy, the commodification of attention, and the redefinition of work and labor in digital economies. As such, questions that the papers in this session may explore includes, but are not limited to: What happens when hobbies, personal time, and even social interactions are transformed into forms of labor and consumption? In what ways are these platforms and patterns of consumption “sustainable”? How do these patterns of consumption affect individual and collective health, not just in medical terms, but also politically, ecologically, and economically?
(Session Organizer) Amanda Koontz, University of Central Florida; Yuki Kato, Georgetown University
Section on Sociology of Consumers and Consumption Roundtables
This roundtable session is open to a wide variety of research that touches on areas of consumers and consumption. Potential topics could include, but are not limited to: trends (e.g., how framing and discourse can influence agendas and related consumption), ongoing (re)construction of taste, the influence of AI and emerging technologies, identity and aesthetics, constructions of space and place, consumer power and ethics, and how the setting of a “consumer society” influences/is influenced by socio-political dynamics.
(Session Organizer) Amanda Koontz, University of Central Florida; Yuki Kato, Georgetown University
Section on Sociology of Culture
Culture and Computational Social Science (Co-sponsored by Section on Mathematical Sociology)
This panel examines how power and epistemology influence mathematical and computational models of culture. We invite contributions on any empirical topic that highlight how authors navigated the moral and normative challenges posed by the aim of modeling culture, whether brought about by the data used, theories applied, or epistemologies. We are especially curious about creative and non-conventional uses and manipulations of data. Submissions can take various forms—STS-inspired analyses of the epistemic assumptions in mathematical modeling, innovative methods for handling unusual or problematic data, or theoretical work addressing the normative aspects of modeling complex systems.
(Session Organizer) Anna K.M. Skarpelis, Queens College (CUNY)
Cultural Mechanisms of Inequality
This session is dedicated to projects that examine how inequality is (re)created and resisted by people “doing things together.” It will consider the actors, actions, institutions, and organizational environments that enable and constrain the reproduction of cultural hegemony. Projects in this session will consider the various impacts of these efforts on different actors, institutions, and organizations. This session is especially interested in projects that use previously ignored or excluded perspectives to make sense of how and why inequality is produced.
(Session Organizer) Jelani I. Ince, University of Washington
Producing, Circulating, and Evaluating Culture
In 1997, Du Gay et al. theorized that one cannot look at a cultural object alone to understand its meaning; rather, we must understand the object in its larger circuit of representation, identity, production, consumption and regulation. Following this line of inquiry, the present panel asks: how do cultural objects and practices become part of our shared collective understandings of the world? This panel welcomes papers that delve into the complex processes behind the creation, circulation, and evaluation of culture. How are cultural objects and practices shaped by social, political, and economic forces? And conversely, how do cultural objects and practices shape social action?
(Session Organizer) Laura Garbes, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
Cultural Ideas and Ideals
Investigations into cultural preferences, tastes, beliefs, and values have the potential to reveal inequalities across many areas of social life. Research that uses culture as its analytic lens can offer a critical window into how individuals or groups make distinctions, specify which characteristics are more valuable than others, and construct hierarchies. This session welcomes research investigating these cultural patterns and processes, broadly defined. Approaches might include interrogations of cultural processes of inclusion or exclusion, aesthetic distinctions that prioritize contributions from high status groups, or organizational procedures that value some people over others, among other topics.
(Session Organizer) Laura Halcomb, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Section on Sociology of Culture Roundtables
Open Call: Section on Sociology of Culture Roundtables
(Session Organizer) Sara Tyberg, University of California-Santa Barbara; Parker Muzzerall, University of British Columbia; Kevin Kiley, North Carolina State University
Co-sponsored session with Section on Race, Gender, and Class; See session details under the Section on Race, Gender, and Class section.
Section on Sociology of Development
New Directions in the Sociology of Development
We invite submissions showcasing the latest and most innovative research in the Sociology of Development. This open-topic panel welcomes original, impactful work from any sub-area, including but not limited to: development theory, gender, globalization, population, state, political economy, race and ethnicity, environment, criminology, conflict, and more. All sociological methodologies—qualitative or quantitative, micro or macro—and theoretical perspectives are welcome. Research can focus on the Global South or North, any region, and any historical period, including contemporary studies. If your work breaks new ground, we want to hear from you!
(Session Organizer) Brian J. Dill, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Problem-Solving Sociology of Development
This session seeks papers that aim not to describe poverty and underdevelopment, but to solve them. We welcome all approaches and are open to a wide range of definitions of “poverty” and “underdevelopment.” We hope to identify and nurture sociological approaches to solving global poverty.
(Session Organizer) Monica Prasad, Johns Hopkins University
Section on Sociology of Development Roundtables
We invite submissions showcasing the breadth of research in the Sociology of Development. All sociological methodologies—qualitative or quantitative, micro or macro—and theoretical perspectives are welcome.
(Session Organizer) Maryann Bylander, Lewis and Clark College
Section on Sociology of Education
Open Topics in the Sociology of Education
The Sociology of Education Open Topics Session provides a platform to address a wide range of topics. We especially invite papers that speak to this year’s theme, “Reimagining the Future of Work,” in the context of education. Among other topics, papers might explore:
- Faculty/staff unionization efforts
- Students’ college-to-career pathways
- DEI dynamics in education
- AI’s effects on the nature of the academic enterprise
- Remote education and post-pandemic instruction
(Session Organizer) Melanie Jones Gast, University of Louisville; Sarah M. Ovink, Virginia Tech
Historical Foundations and New Directions: 21st Century Sociology of Education
How have the historical foundations of the sociology of education shaped our current understanding of educational processes and outcomes? How can landmark works in the sociology of education be reinterpreted and extended to address persistent inequalities? How can scholars bridge past contributions with future directions in the field? What enduring questions and persistent gaps remain in our field despite decades of research? In what ways are new methodological advances expanding our capacity to analyze educational phenomena? What role should the sociology of education play in addressing the 21st century educational landscape? This session examines the historical foundations, theoretical shifts, and methodological advances of the field and explores calls for the field to move in particular directions.
(Session Organizer) Jordan Conwell, University of Texas-Austin
Education and Society: Institutional Interactions and Reciprocal Influences
As a fundamental social institution, education continuously shapes and is shaped by its interactions with other major societal structures and systems. This session will explore various research topics related to this broader theme. For instance, these could be studies of:
- How family structures and dynamics relate to educational experiences and outcomes and how education shapes romantic and sexual relationships and family formation.
- Relationships between the labor market and educational curricula and policies.
- The dynamics between government, political participation, and schools.
- How aspects of schools interact with the demographic, structural, social, physical, and cultural dimensions of neighborhoods.
- When and how education and public health intersect.
- The relationship between religious practices, beliefs, institutions, and schooling.
(Session Organizer) Jeremy E. Fiel, Rice University
The Landscape of Access to Educational Opportunity: Gateways and Barriers
Educational access profoundly impacts and is impacted by various dimensions of social stratification and identity. This session will explore research topics related to this broader theme. For instance, these could be studies of:
- Racial and socioeconomic disparities in educational access
- Geographic variations in educational resources and quality
- Policies aimed at promoting educational equity
- Disability and inclusive education
- Gender and sexuality in educational access and experiences
- LGBTQ+ students’ rights and challenges in educational settings
- Intersectionality in educational opportunity (e.g., how race, class, gender, sexuality, and disability intersect to affect access)
(Session Organizer) Anna Rhodes, Rice University
Section on Sociology of Education Roundtables
Open Call: Section on Sociology of Education Roundtables
(Session Organizer) Mary Kate Blake, Montana State University; Rebecca Hannah Bier, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Section on Sociology of Emotions
Advances in the Sociology of Emotions
This session is dedicated to papers advancing emotions scholarship.
(Session Organizer) Sarah K. Harkness, University of Iowa
Section on Sociology of Human Rights
Constructing New Human Rights Norms and Practices
A whole host of global forces, such as the pandemic and technology advancement, have shaped the changing nature of the future of work. It has implications for the future of labor force, how workers organize themselves, work-life balance and arrangements. More importantly, it will help shape the norms and practices of human rights around the world. This panel invites papers that either directly addresses these themes or are adjacent to the topics discussed here.
(Session Organizer) Lynette H. Ong, University of Toronto
Section on Human Rights Roundtables
We welcome papers or work-in-progress that address human rights and/or “the future of work” as per the conference theme for this year.
(Session Organizer) Lynette H. Ong, University of Toronto
Section on Sociology of Indigenous Peoples and Native Nations
Unsettling Race and Gender Through Indigenous Sociologies
Papers in this session address race/racialization, queer, trans*, and Two Spirit from the perspective of Indigenous sociologies. Research bringing these topics into conversation is of particular interest.
(Session Organizer) Piper Sledge, University of Arizona
Section on Sociology of Indigenous Peoples and Native Nations Roundtable: Indigenizing Sociological Research
This roundtable will focus on critical topics that could benefit from distinctly Indigenous approaches to sociology such as health, education, climate change, etc.
(Session Organizer) Piper Sledge, University of Arizona
Section on Sociology of Law
Law and Political Economy
What can a sociology of law do for political economy? This session brings together scholars working on the role of law at the intersection of economy and state. A particular focus will be drawn to issues of rent seeking and extraction, assets and wealth, monopoly and anti-trust issues, technology, labor regulation, trade, property rights, debt, and, among others, political power of economic actors. Submissions can engage with these issues from various theoretical, empirical or methodological perspectives, addressing their implications at local, national, or global levels. We welcome submissions across substantive areas, so long as they speak to how legal frameworks interact with political economic systems.
(Session Organizer) Armando Lara-Millan, University of California-Berkeley
Law and Environment
This panel invites papers that explore the relationships between law, society, and the environment, broadly conceived. Potential topics may include—but are certainly not limited to—the role of law and legal actors in environmental justice movements; adaptation to climate change; ecological preservation and conservation; sustainable governance of natural resources; responding to climate effects on conditions in prisons and the built environment; planning for resilience to natural disasters; and the role of scientific experts and expertise in legal and regulatory change. We welcome submissions that analyze connections between law, society, and the environment at any scale—from local to regional, national, and global.
(Session Organizer) Nate Ela, Temple University; Jessica T. Simes, Boston University
Open Topic Session in Sociology of Law
The Sociology of Law Open Topics Session provides a platform for scholars to address a wide range of topics within the sociology of law.
(Session Organizer) Armando Lara-Millan, University of California-Berkeley
Section on Sociology of Law Roundtables
Open Call: Section on Sociology of Law Roundtables
(Session Organizer) Megan Kang, Princeton University
Section on Sociology of Mental Health
Singlehood and Mental Health
The global single population is increasing, raising important questions about its implications for mental health, both in scholarly debates and in public and political discourse. This session invites papers that examine the relationship between singlehood and mental health. Singlehood is broadly defined to include individuals who have never been legally married, as well as those who are separated, divorced, or widowed. We welcome papers that compare single individuals with their partnered counterparts, as well as those that focus on the heterogeneity within the single population.
(Session Organizer) Lijun Song, Vanderbilt University; Deborah Carr, Boston University
Work and Mental Health
This session invites papers that address questions about how work, broadly defined, influences mental health. Topics related to work may include labor force participation, precarious work, specific characteristics of work quality, and work and occupational inequities. In keeping with the theme of ASA 2025, papers that engage with the future of work are encouraged.
(Session Organizer) Rachel Donnelly, Vanderbilt University; Scott Schieman, University of Toronto
Section on Sociology of Population
Policies, Politics, and Population Processes
Policy, budget, and legislative decisions, along with political events and rhetoric, shape population dynamics and health outcomes, influencing healthcare access, immigration patterns, birth rates, and illness and mortality trends. The mechanisms linking these broad political dynamics to health include behavioral, institutional, physiological and psychosocial pathways. Papers in this session will explore how policies, laws, power struggles, and political discourse influence various population outcomes.
(Session Organizer) Paola Langer, University of California-Berkeley
Population and Environment
Environmental and climatic change unevenly impact populations due to differences across sociodemographic characteristics. Demographic characteristics and processes in turn contribute to differentials in vulnerability, adaptation, and mitigation. Papers in this session will explore the relationship between sociodemographic characteristics and demographic and environmental change on the three component population processes of fertility, mortality, and migration.
(Session Organizer) Mathew Hauer, Florida State University
Demography and the Future of Work
Across the world, societies are grappling with how demographic trends affect work and the economy, from youth bulges that could produce a “demographic dividend,” to rapidly aging populations that may strain pension and safety net systems, to increasing domestic and international migration due to factors such as housing prices and climate change. These trends may result in considerable variation in the nature of the future of work across places and populations, though there will likely be commonalities as well. Papers in this session will take a demographic perspective on the future of work and may consider both paid and unpaid work. Submissions that consider heterogeneity of relationships are particularly welcome.
(Session Organizer) Margaret Michele Gough Courtney, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
Section on Sociology of Population Roundtables
The Roundtable session welcomes papers on all topics within the sociology of population! Empirical papers and theoretical papers are welcome, as are papers using a range of methodological approaches.
(Session Organizer) Christie Sennott, Purdue University; Jessica Short, Indiana University-Bloomington
Co-sponsored session with the Family Section; See session details under Family Section.
Section on Sociology of Religion
Section on Sociology of Religion Open Paper Sessions
Four open sessions for research pertaining to the sociology of religion.
(Session Organizer) Laura Upenieks, Baylor University; David E. Eagle, Duke University
Section on Sociology of Religion Roundtables
The presentation of original research in a short, interactive format. Presenters will be grouped thematically at tables to share their research and hear from others doing similar research.
(Session Organizer) Jennifer Obiageli Laderi, Baylor University; Riley Scott Peterson, Baylor University
Section on Sociology of Sex and Gender
Open Topic Paper Session on Sex and Gender
Open topic paper session on sex and gender
(Session Organizer) Carla A. Pfeffer, Michigan State University; Katherine Mueller, The Ohio State University; Cinzia D. Solari, UMass Boston; Dan Cassino, Fairleigh Dickinson University-College at Florham; Heather McLaughlin, Oklahoma State University
Hormones, Biology, and Embodied and Reproductive Justice
The past several years have witnessed profound social and legal controversies over who can participate as men or women in various organized sports (including in the Olympics); restricted and limited access to hormone replacement and blocker therapies among nonbinary and transgender youth; restricted and limited access to abortion, contraception, and IVF; social inequities and violent conflicts that are shaping bodies and reproductive futures; and a return to biologically-essentialist understandings of sex, gender, and the body. For this session, we invite papers that engage feminist, critical, and intersectional analyses of hormones and biology to contribute to justice-focused scholarship on bodies and reproduction.
(Session Organizer) Carla A. Pfeffer, Michigan State University; Cinzia D. Solari, UMass Boston; Dan Cassino, Fairleigh Dickinson University-College at Florham; Heather McLaughlin, Oklahoma State University; Katherine Mueller, The Ohio State University
Right-Wing Misappropriations of Feminism
Right-wing misappropriations of feminism often co-opt the language of gender equity to promote conservative agendas, undermining the movement’s core principles. By framing issues like women’s empowerment in the context of actively choosing traditional gender roles or family values (e.g., Trad Wife social media representations), repurposing body positivity to endorse intentional weight loss and cosmetic surgeries, crafting anti-choice and anti-trans rhetorics that emphasize regret narratives, and proclaiming concerns about women’s safety and well-being by focusing on supposed threats to these (e.g., immigrants, trans bathroom access, access to medical technologies), these narratives dilute feminist struggles for systemic change and reinforce existing inequalities rather than challenge them. For this thematic panel, we seek papers that explore right-wing misappropriations of feminism and that outline effective strategies to guard against such misappropriation.
(Session Organizer) Carla A. Pfeffer, Michigan State University; Heather McLaughlin, Oklahoma State University; Cinzia D. Solari, UMass Boston; Dan Cassino, Fairleigh Dickinson University-College at Florham; Katherine Mueller, The Ohio State University
Anti-Work and Anti-Capitalist Feminist Futures
This year’s conference theme is The Future of Work. In this thematic panel, we invite papers that turn a feminist lens to the future of work. Following intersectional and materialist feminist theorizing and scholarship, we seek analyses that consider resistance to work-as-usual approaches to consider more radical possibilities for feminist futures. We are interested in papers that address: modified work weeks, worker collectives and cooperatives, union organizing, remote and hybrid work, opting out, labor exploitation, and alternatives to capitalism and capitalist work.
(Session Organizer) Carla A. Pfeffer, Michigan State University; Katherine Mueller, The Ohio State University; Dan Cassino, Fairleigh Dickinson University-College at Florham; Cinzia D. Solari, UMass Boston; Heather McLaughlin, Oklahoma State University
Section on Sociology of Sex and Gender Roundtables
Open Call: Section on Sociology of Sex and Gender Roundtables
(Session Organizer) Carla A. Pfeffer, Michigan State University; Katherine Mueller, The Ohio State University; Dan Cassino, Fairleigh Dickinson University-College at Florham; Cinzia D. Solari, UMass Boston; Heather McLaughlin, Oklahoma State University
Section on Sociology of Sexualities
Sports and Sexuality
How do we make sense of conflicting reactions to LGBTQ+ identities in sports? Despite the visibility and rise of LGBTQ+ athletes and athletes of color, persistent beliefs in sex essentialism, heteronormativity, and the Western ideal of the desirable body remain intact in mainstream sports culture. This panel will explore the relationship between sports and LGBTQ+ identity through an intersectional and transnational lens. Issues like sex testing have long been a concern in global sports competitions, such as the Olympics, where competitive female athletes, especially those of color, are often subjected to these tests when they do not fit the Western ideal of femininity. Transgender athletes at all levels are attacked or punished, with some sports seeing games forfeited in protest. At the same time, lesbian and bisexual athletes are gaining significant attention and support from fans across various sports, including the WNBA and NWSL. This panel welcomes papers that examine not only identity but also expressions of sexuality in relation to fandom, marketing, and the policing of sports in the U.S. and globally.
(Session Organizer) Jinsun Yang, University of Oregon; Travers Travers, Simon Fraser University
Sexualities in Turbulent Times: Capitalist Crises, Democratic Decadence, and Right Wing Proto-Fascism
Our world is in chaos. Geopolitical tensions remain high, with ongoing, genocidal wars in Palestine, Lebanon, Sudan, and other regions. Eroding democracy, rising authoritarianism, and political polarization contribute to global precariousness. Climate change causes various disruptions, while economic uncertainties persist. This panel will explore how these turbulent forces shape contemporary sexualities and impact people’s intimate lives globally, and rethink what sexual justice and transnational solidarities mean in difficult times. We invite submissions focusing on intersectional, decolonial, and/or transnational analytics, examining the connections between global and regional crises and the transformation of sexual identities, marginalized communities, and erotic experiences.
(Session Organizer) Alithia Zamantakis, Northwestern University; Cristián Valenzuela-Méndez, Northwestern University
Sexualities and the Sociology of Nightlife
A crescendo of recent studies highlight the role of nightlife in shaping, remaking, and actualizing sexualities. This panel invites papers that provide new and innovative sociological explorations of nightlife and its broader impacts for social life, particularly opportunities for shared pleasures and political organizing. Studies might attend to the economic and political transformations that are reshaping physical venues and sending parties wheeling across the city. Through performance artistry like drag or burlesque, straight and LGBTQ+ people dramatize and recast identities both for themselves and their audiences, but are the effects durable beyond a flashing reveal? Premeditated fun is someone’s daily—nightly—grind, difficult and demeaning labor that is often performed by workers who are marginalized from the scenes they facilitate. Who does the work of curating nightlife’s pleasures, how is their labor valued, and what is that work’s connection to the sexualities of the revelers? Politicians sometimes try to harness nightlife for their own economic ends, but at what expense, and to whose benefit? Studies that attend to temporality itself are welcome: is daytime straight time, and the night always already queer? Does attending to the exclusions and inequalities beneath the glittering surface of the night preclude an attention to tender pleasures and raucous joy? What is the sex that appears in public, and is the sex that is concealed just as full of friction, and in what ways? As always, this panel especially encourages analytics that are intersectional, decolonial, and/or transnational.
(Session Organizer) Greggor Mattson, Oberlin College & Conservatory; Amin Ghaziani, The University of British Columbia
Section on Sociology of Sexualities Roundtables
(Session Organizer) Rebecca F. Plante, Ithaca College; Cameron James Keating, Indiana University-Bloomington
Section on Teaching and Learning in Sociology
Reimagining the Future of Teaching Sociology
Paralleling the broad conference theme, content in this session explores the way that the work of teaching sociology has been reshaped and reconfigured in recent decade(s) by and through many social phenomena including social media, generative AI, content challenges to our field of study, declining student enrollments, dwindling department sizes, and emphases on career readiness, just to name a few. In considering these recent changes, projections of what these changes might mean for the “future of teaching sociology” for all career stages are highlighted, with emphasis on what the future might hold for graduate students anticipating academic careers in sociology.
(Session Organizer) Meredith J. Gilbertson, Bowling Green State University; Ann M. Beutel, University of Oklahoma
Theory Section
Decolonizing and Intersectionalizing the Canon
This is an open session sponsored by the Theory section. This session surfaces key debates about the status of the sociological canon. Many advocate for diversifying and expanding the existing canon. Some have pushed for upending and replacing the all-white, all-male, all-European canon, while other scholars challenge us to rethink whether we need a canon at all, and for what purpose. This session invites submissions that aim to rethink the cannon, including but not limited to engaging with its colonial legacies, identifying the intersectional experiences it overlooks, or exploring pathways to include more voices.
(Session Organizer) Shai M. Dromi, Harvard University; Ioana Sendroiu, University of Hong Kong; Claire Laurier Decoteau, University of Illinois-Chicago
Theory Section Roundtables
This roundtable session will feature theoretical papers submitted by members of the theory section.
(Session Organizer) Veda Hyunjin Kim, Ohio Wesleyan University; Heidi Christine Nicholls, Binghamton University; Nabila N Islam, Brown University
Co-sponsored session with Section on Comparative-Historical Sociology on “Theorizing Crisis”; See session details under the Section on Comparative-Historical Sociology section.
