Theme 1: Social and Community Studies

On disciplinary and interdisciplinary practices in the study of the social.

  • Sociology: concepts and practices
  • Geographical perspectives on spaces and flows
  • What are the behavioral sciences?
  • Psychology of the social
  • Where mind meets world: cognitive science as interdisciplinary practice
  • Economics as social science
  • Sociology and history: the dynamics of synchrony and diachrony
  • Philosophy’s place in the social sciences
  • Social welfare studies as interdisciplinary practice
  • Health in community
  • Horizons of interest: agenda setting in the social sciences
  • Research and knowledge in action: the applied social sciences
  • Social sciences for the professions
  • Social sciences for social welfare
  • Accounting for inequalities: poverty and exclusion
  • Social breakdown: dysfunction, crime, conflict, violence
  • Social sciences addressing social crisis points
  • Technologies in and for the social
  • Economics, politics and their social effects: investment, ownership, risk, productivity, competition, regulation and deregulation, public accountability, stakeholders, trust, worklife, resource distribution, consumption, wellbeing, living standards
  • Commonalities, differences and relationships between the social and the natural sciences: research methodologies, professional practices and ethical positions
  • Research methodologies involving ‘human subjects’
  • The social sciences in the applied sciences and professions: engineering, architecture, planning, computing, tourism, law, health

Theme 2: Civic and Political Studies

On the processes of governance and nature of citizenship.

  • Political science as disciplinary practice
  • Investigating public policy
  • Law as a social science
  • Criminology as social science
  • Public health
  • Social sciences in the service of social policy: risks and rewards
  • Social transformations: structure and agency in social dynamics
  • Accounting for the dynamics of citizenship, participation and inclusion
  • Trust, social capital, social cohesion and social welfare
  • Politics in, and of, the social sciences
  • Interdisciplinary perspectives on politics, public policy, governance, citizenship and nationality
  • Security and insecurity, conflict and cohesion, war and peace, terror and anti-terror
  • The neo-liberal state and its critics
  • Policy measures: assessing social need and social effectiveness

Theme 3: Cultural Studies

On disciplinary and interdisciplinary practices in the study of human cultures and cultural interactions.

  • Of human lifeways: anthropology in its contexts
  • Of human lifecourses: family, childhood, youth, parenting and aging
  • Of human origins: paleontology, primate evolution, physical anthropology
  • Ethnographic methods
  • Social meanings: language, linguistics, discourse, text
  • Cultural studies as a constitutive field
  • Social science stances: modernism and postmodernism; structuralism and poststructuralism
  • Where humanities and social sciences meet
  • Social structure and human culture: the sociological and the anthropological
  • Interdisciplinary perspectives on human differences
  • Identities in social science: generational, gender, sexuality, ethnic, diasporic
  • Perspectives on, and voices of, difference: multiculturalism and feminism
  • Religion and the human sciences
  • Health, wellbeing and culture

Theme 4: Global Studies

On the dynamics of globalization and the transformation of the local.

  • Global flows
  • Global security
  • Human movement: migration, refugees, undocumented migrants
  • The dynamics of globalization, diaspora and diversity
  • Globalized economics: inequalities, development, ‘free’ and ‘fair’ trade
  • Developed and developing worlds
  • Inequalities in international perspective
  • Poverty and global justice
  • Human rights in global perspective
  • The local and the global

Theme 5: Environmental Studies

On the connections between human and natural environments.

  • The natural and the social: interdisciplinary studies
  • Human environments
  • Sustainability as a focus of interdisciplinary study
  • What are applied sciences?
  • Health and the environment
  • People, place and time: human demography
  • Environmental governance: consumption, waste, economic ‘externalities’, sustainability, environmental equity
  • Human interests in the natural sciences: the politics of the environment

Theme 6: Organizational Studies

On the social dynamics of public, community and privately owned organizations.

  • Management as social science
  • Culture in organizations
  • Technology and work
  • The social dynamics of organizations
  • Human resource management
  • Workers’ rights
  • Corporate governance
  • Organizational and social sustainability
  • Corporate social responsibility
  • Knowledge ecologies: embedded knowledge in the organizational setting
  • Tacit and explicit knowledge
  • Private and public knowledge
  • Scenario building and futures forecasting
  • Organizational change

Theme 7: Educational Studies

On learning about the social and social learning.

  • Education as a social science
  • The learning sciences as an interdisciplinary endeavor
  • Action research: the logistics and ethics of interventionary social science
  • Teaching and learning the social studies
  • History teaching and learning
  • Economics teaching and learning
  • Geography teaching and learning
  • Technology in learning and learning about technology

Theme 8: Communication

On the representation and communication of human meanings.

  • Media studies as social science
  • Communications as a social science
  • Information and communications technologies
  • The social web: the internet in its social context
  • Human-computer interactions
  • Literacies as a social learning experience