The 7th Annual PhD Conference
The Institute of Communications Studies
University of Leeds

The Non-Financial Crisis: Politics, Media and Culture in the Present Economic Context
31 May, 2013, Leeds

The recent financial crisis that caused the collapse of large financial institutions, the bailout of banks by national governments, and the struggle of national and trans-national governments in tackling the crisis, has signalled the need for fundamental changes in economic and political systems.

In this conference we hope to interrogate the various aspects of the crisis. These aspects span beyond economic considerations to broader issues related to socio-political systems, media and cultural production. Almost all fields are affected by the crisis and forced to change. The changes in these fields are interdependent and will have important implications for our future. With this aim in mind we invite submissions which could address any of the following questions or investigate related issues:

1. Politics

• How is the crisis changing the way leaders appeal to audiences?
• How has the crisis influenced political agendas?
• How have governments been dealing with the communication of the crisis?
• Has the crisis brought about new forms of political action?
• Is the economic crisis encouraging citizen participation?
• Is it still possible for the public sphere to influence national government in times of transnational crisis?
• Has the crisis in anyway influenced the legitimacy of transnational institutions?

2. Media and Journalism

• How has the media represented the crisis?
• What are the challenges for communicating the crisis?
• Have journalistic practices changed due to the influence of the crisis?
• How have the economic crisis and budget cuts influenced media production?
• Have new media changed the way news is produced and distributed during crisis?
• Will the media play a different role in society after the crisis?
• Has new media been shrinking or expanding disparity between the North and the South during the crisis?

3. Culture

• Cultural labour and value creation: what impact has the crisis had on the dynamic between creative autonomy and market imperatives?
• Are the creative industries more resilient to the impact of the economic crisis than traditional manufacturing industries?
• What might the implications be of public subsidy cuts for culture and the cultural labour market?
• What roles can the cultural and creative industries play in promoting job creation and economic growth?
• Could the cultural industries play a real and significant role in the development and adoption of new socioeconomic models?
• Where does the culture industry debate lie today: what have been the effects of the commodification of culture?
• What is art’s relationship to social change? Is there legitimate faith in the autonomy of art as bound to the promise of a better world to come?
• What might be the outcomes of the economic crisis for European culture?

Please email 250-300 word abstract, with any institutional affiliation and brief biography, to the following email address by March 1, 2013 (earlier submissions welcome):

ics-pg-conference@leeds.ac.uk

This call for papers is also available online: http://www.ics-phd-conference.leeds.ac.uk/

Invited Academic Speakers include: Richard Alba, Jagdish Bhagwati, François Bourguignon, Leah Boustan, David Card, Barry Chiswick, Claudia Diehl, Frederic Docquier, Ayse Guveli, Jens Hainmueller, Anthony Heath, Jennifer Hunt, Frank Kalter, Ethan Lewis, Mirca Madianou, Valentina Mazzucato, David McKenzie, Judi Mesman, Kaivan Munshi, Giovanni Peri, Lucinda Platt, Imran Rasul and Jeffrey Reitz.

Academic Podia on:

Transnational and Multicultural Lives
Ethnicity, Religion and Discrimination
First and Second Generation Migrants
Migration and Knowledge Spill-overs
Migration and Development
New Frontiers in Migration Data

Policy Podia on:

How should Governments Best Address World Trends in Migration?
Migration: the Key Challenge for the EU?

Invitation to submit: The NORFACE Research Programme on Migration and the Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration (CReAM) at UCL are jointly organising a large interdisciplinary conference on migration. The conference will be held from 10th – 13th April, 2013 at University College London. It will feature invited talks, contributed sessions and a number of academic podia on topics at the frontier of the migration research agenda, as well as two policy events, where high level practitioners, politicians and media representatives will discuss migration related issues.

We welcome scholars from economics, sociology, psychology, demography, anthropology, development studies, and other disciplines with an interest in migration issues, to submit innovative papers on any aspect related to migration. Papers and abstracts should be submitted electronically, using the on-line submission link below.

Submission Guidelines: Submissions for presentation should include an abstract (max. 250 words) and a full paper.

Submission Deadline: Submissions of full papers (pdf files) for contributed sessions are expected by 16th December, 2012.

To submit a paper, please click here

Acceptance decisions will be communicated to the submitters by 31st January, 2013.

Presentation Format: The selected papers will be grouped by category. There will be parallel sessions, with four presentations in each session. Each parallel session will be two hours long. Each presenter will be allocated 30 minutes, including time for discussion.

Other: Travel and accommodation expenses should be covered by the participants themselves. However, there will be a limited number of registration fee waivers for participants under exceptional circumstances.

To download the poster for the call for papers, please click here

Congress of the Swiss Sociological Association June 26 – 28, 2013 at the University of Bern
Inequality and Integration in Times of Crisis

Since Karl Marx first described the enormous social inequalities and their potential for social change at the beginning of industrialization in the 19th century, the origins, extent, and consequences of social inequality, as well the level of inequality which a society is willing to tolerate, have been major themes in sociology. Our discipline has taken on the theme of inequality in multiple areas ranging from research on unequal educational and labor market opportunities, unequal income distributions, gender and health inequality, and inequality in life expectancy, to mention only a few. There are innumerable national and international conferences devoted to these themes. Do we need yet another one? Is inequality still a problem in our society?

The answer to this question is undoubtedly yes. In particular, the economic crisis at the start of the 21st century underlines the fact that the theme of inequality has not lost its relevance. Above all, the European debt crisis inclines us to suspect that social inequality is growing. In comparison with economic boom times, almost all the European countries feel the pressure of stabilizing their economies and cutting back on public expenditures. This will also impact redistributional policies to reduce inequality and bring about new challenges for integration policies addressing the emerging disparities. At the same time as inequalities within European societies are exacerbated, disparities between states are also rising, which will likely have adverse effects on European unification, not to mention creating new challenges for Switzerland as well.

The European debt crisis came at a point in time when global environmental and demographic problems worsened simultaneously – the aging of industrialized countries and population explosion in developing countries. The inequality effects of climate change and the unequal distribution of population growth will lead to an increase in migration and elevate the immigration pressure on the European Union and Switzerland. For this reason, Switzerland, as well as the other European countries, grapple with questions of managing migration and integration.

Inequalities – as problematic they may be – are also in some sense an opportunity. They increase the diversity of society and can bring about new ideas, innovation, and growth. Our desire and ability for social integration depends, above all, on the ultimate balance between these advantages and disadvantages. Within the framework of the various foci of the research committees, the conference will concentrate on the opportunities as well as the risks associated with these social changes.

Call for Organizers
If you would like to organize a plenary session, please submit the title of the plenary as well as the designated contributions (including titles, abstracts, and the names of the contributors) to the organizing committee by January 15, 2013 (by e-mail to sgs-kongress2013@soz.unibe.ch). A plenary session usually includes three contributions.

If you would like to organize a workshop (parallel session), please submit the theme proposal and call for papers for the workshop to the organizing committee by November 30, 2012 (by e-mail to sgs-kongress2013@soz.unibe.ch). After the organizing committee accepts the proposal, the call for papers will be published. The organizers of the workshop are responsible for collecting the submissions and selecting the contributions to be included in the workshop. The final program of the workshop (including titles, abstracts, and the names of the contributors) has to be submitted to the organizing committee by March 15, 2013 (by e-mail to sgs-kongress2013@soz.unibe.ch).

Information
Further information about the conference can be found on our homepage: www.sgs-kongress2013.unibe.ch