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News and Events
Call for submissions for 2nd Annual UCC Futures - Collective Social Futures, Festival of Social Science Conference
The 2024 Festival of Social Science (CSF) will launch on 25th November with an evening of music, spoken word and performance in The Shtepps, followed by a full-day CSF conference on 26th November in the Aula Maxima.
Call for Submissions to:
Social Science Matters: Innovation, Co-production and Social Transformation
UCC Futures - Collective Social Futures
2nd Annual Festival of Social Science
25-26 November 2024
About Collective Social Futures
Building upon our history of outstanding social-science research, the Collective Social Futures interdisciplinary platform is led by the Institute for Social Science in the 21st Century (ISS21) in collaboration with the Centre for Co-operative Studies, the Environmental Research Institute, Cleaner Production Promotion Unit, and the Inclusion Health Research Group, working together with schools and departments across UCC.
Together we leverage cross-disciplinary synergies throughout our university and beyond, for meaningful co-production of knowledge, oriented towards social action and social change. We seek to do this by advancing innovative, creative, critical, theoretical as well as participatory and community-engaged research, to better understand, re-envision and enact our collective social futures.
Conference Theme: Social Science Matters: Innovation, Co-production and Social Transformation
In Europe and across the world, both globally and locally, we are experiencing many challenges including what has been described as the ‘polycrisis’ that includes: climate change, climate migration; health emergencies; wars and forced migration; the rise of right wing populism, authoritarian forces, threats to the freedom of speech and indeed threats to academic freedom; systemic gender based inequalities, discriminations and gender based violence; cybercrime, and cyber anxieties associated with the rise of artificial intelligence; the erosion of social cohesion and widening poverty and social inequalities, often experienced in the very material, spatial and social fabric of our cities, towns and communities.
The Social Sciences are vital for opening and keeping open dialogue, critical analysis and reflections on societal challenges and they are also part of the solution, often through innovative, interdisciplinary and creative interventions.
In the second annual Festival of Social Science at UCC we invite contributions from those who affiliate with Collective Social Futures, drawing upon inter disciplinary expertise, theoretical and methodological innovations (including creative methods, co-production and socially engaged methods) that connect critical thinking with social science practices to better understand these challenges, envision and indeed enact alterative social futures and social transformations.
The 2024-25 Festival is based upon the following themes:
- Innovation - How can we best take account of and understand rapidly changing societal complexities in understandable and meaningful ways? What new and/or renewed theories and methodologies matter at this time of social turbulence constituted by the ‘polycrisis’.
- Co-Production - How can our research methods and research practices be reimagined in ways that foster interdisciplinarity, are socially engaged, and creative, mutually beneficial and not extractive?
- Social Transformation - How can democracy and collective engagement, university and community partnerships supported by theoretical and methodological innovations be re-envisioned to achieve action-oriented interventions as well as social, spatial and ecologically sustainable transformations.
We welcome individual contributions, panels, round tables and research walks on research findings, research methodologies, and theoretical debates in one or more of the three thematic areas identified above from the ISS21/CSF Board and colleagues who affiliate to CSF.
To submit a contribution to the festival please go to: https://forms.office.com/e/0WtQeRXbzx
For more on this story contact:
For more information, please contact Prof Maggie O'Neill or Dr Margaret Scanlon