Call for Papers
We invite you to join us for the Twenty-third International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences, the annual meeting of the Interdisciplinary Social Sciences Research Network, hosted by the Institute of Social and Political Sciences, University of Lisbon, taking place in Lisbon, Portugal, and online, 12–14 July 2028. The conference is part of a paired gathering with the Twenty-first Global Studies Conference, bringing together overlapping communities of inquiry to examine how social and global futures are being imagined, contested, and built in a fragmented yet interconnected world.
The Interdisciplinary Social Sciences Research Network is a leading international meeting place for scholars, researchers, educators, policymakers, practitioners, and community leaders working across the social sciences and related fields. The Conference welcomes proposals that address society not only through single disciplines, but through interdisciplinary inquiry into social life, institutions, culture, governance, inequality, environment, education, communication, and change.
Across the world, societies are being reshaped by overlapping pressures: political fragmentation, widening inequality, social polarization, democratic uncertainty, technological disruption, migration, ecological risk, and renewed struggles over identity, belonging, and public life. We welcome interdisciplinary proposals that engage these questions through research, theory, policy, professional practice, public engagement, and community-based knowledge.
Special Focus and Themes
Imagining Social Futures:
Equity, Innovation, and Resilience in a Fragmented yet Interconnected World
We meet at a moment of profound contradiction. The world is increasingly interconnected through digital infrastructures, global mobility, transnational institutions, and shared ecological and economic systems. At the same time, societies are experiencing political fragmentation, widening inequality, social polarization, democratic uncertainty, technological disruption, and renewed struggles over identity, belonging, and public life.
How can the social sciences help us understand these transformations? What kinds of futures are being imagined, designed, contested, or excluded? How might research contribute to more inclusive forms of social organization, public policy, technological development, and collective life?
Hosted by the Institute of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Lisbon, the 2028 conference will explore the relationships among social imagination, institutional change, innovation, equity, and resilience. We welcome theoretically engaged, empirically grounded, practice-based, and interdisciplinary contributions.
This special focus invites critical and practical conversations about how societies imagine and build futures in conditions of instability, fragmentation, and interdependence. Social futures are never simply predicted. They are shaped through institutions, policies, movements, technologies, cultural narratives, educational practices, and everyday forms of collective life. In this context, the question of the future is also a question of social imagination: who gets to imagine it, whose needs it serves, and what forms of knowledge, participation, and responsibility guide its development.
We welcome contributions addressing social futures as questions of equity, innovation, resilience, governance, culture, community, and interdisciplinary knowledge.
Themes
- Equity, Justice, and Social Inclusion: This theme explores how societies confront inequality, exclusion, and uneven access to resources, rights, and recognition. It invites work on poverty, social welfare, race, ethnicity, gender, class, disability, migration, human rights, public health, education, social policy, and the institutional conditions that shape inclusion and exclusion.
- Institutions, Governance, and Civic Life: This theme explores how public institutions, legal systems, civic cultures, and political structures respond to social fragmentation and change. It invites work on citizenship, democracy, public policy, governance, civic participation, social movements, public trust, conflict, security, and the relationship between institutions and everyday social life.
- Innovation, Knowledge, and Social Transformation: This theme explores how societies create, circulate, and contest knowledge in times of change. It invites work on social innovation, digital technologies, communication, media, education, organizational change, interdisciplinary methods, public knowledge, artificial intelligence, social research, and the role of knowledge in shaping social futures.
- Resilience, Place, and Interconnected Futures: This theme explores how communities and institutions respond to environmental, economic, cultural, and demographic pressures. It invites work on climate risk, sustainability, urban and rural futures, migration, globalization, community resilience, local and global interdependence, place-based knowledge, and the social dimensions of ecological and economic change.
We also welcome proposals addressing the core themes of the Interdisciplinary Social Sciences Research Network, including social and community studies, civic and political studies, cultural studies, global studies, environmental studies, organizational studies, educational studies, and communication.
Knowledge Experience and Format
The conference is organised as a hybrid knowledge experience, integrating in-person and online participation within a unified scholarly environment. Sessions at Sorbonne University are integrated with live online and asynchronous presentations, ensuring shared engagement among delegates regardless of mode of participation.
Languages of Participation
The principal language of this page is English, and presenters may submit proposals and present in English, whether participating in person or online.
The Conference also welcomes proposals and presentations in Spanish. To submit a proposal in Spanish, please use the Spanish-language proposal pathway. Submit a proposal in Spanish: https://cgscholar.com/events/x...
Publication Pathways
Presenters are invited to develop their work for possible publication in the journals of the Interdisciplinary Social Sciences Research Network, including The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Social and Community Studies, The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies, The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Civic and Political Studies, and The International Journal of Interdisciplinary Educational Studies.
Participants may also propose longer-form projects for the Interdisciplinary Social Sciences Book Imprint, which publishes monographs and edited collections focused on comparative social research, policy analysis, cultural studies, civic life, education, and interdisciplinary social inquiry.
All accepted proposals are included in the conference proceedings, providing a formal record of the conference program and presentation abstracts. Proceedings help make presenters’ work discoverable as part of the annual knowledge record of the Research Network.
A Member-Based Research Community
The Interdisciplinary Social Sciences Research Network is a member-based international research community connecting people working across the social sciences and related interdisciplinary fields.
Membership provides year-round opportunities to participate in the life of the Research Network through conferences, publications, digital resources, and the CGScholar Community. Members receive access to Research Network content and publications, conference registration benefits, opportunities for continued learning and exchange, and pathways for developing and sharing their work.
The Community provides a space for members to maintain profiles, share projects, engage with other participants, revisit conference programs and recordings, and contribute to continuing conversations across the Research Network.
Membership in the Interdisciplinary Social Sciences Research Network is included in all conference Presenter Passes.
Join Us
We warmly invite you to submit a proposal and join us, either in Lisbon or online, for the Twenty-third International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences.
Together, we will examine how social futures can be imagined, contested, and built with greater equity, innovation, and resilience in a fragmented yet interconnected world.
Regards,
Dr. Ricardo Ramos Pinto, Local Conference Committee, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal
Dr. Maria José Sousa, Local Conference Committee, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal
Dr. João Ricardo Catarino, Local Conference Committee, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal
Dr. Marcin Galent, Research Network Chair, Institute for European Studies, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland
Dr. Phillip Kalantzis Cope, Chief Social Scientist, Common Ground Research Networks, United States of America