Emotions and Social Justice: Politics, Polarisation and Activism

BSA Emotions Study Group Symposium 2025

1-2 July 2025
Online

Call for Papers

Emotions are at the very heart of our social lives, with research on emotions within sociology (and cognate fields) recently developing a particularly keen interest in the complex interplay between emotions and social (in)justice. This is especially against the backdrop of intensifying interconnected and multi-faceted crises (from the local through to the global) in recent years. We invite researchers working on or around any area of sociological work on emotions pertaining to themes of politics, polarisation, and activism, to submit abstracts that examine the tensions, synergies and discontinuities between emotions and social (in)justice.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

Social and political crises (including times of social/political unrest and in/security)
Decolonisation
Activism (within and without the academe)
Marginalisation
Migration and belonging
Racism, ethnicity, nationalism
Gender and sexuality
Spaces of possibility
Health and illness
Emotions through time, place and space
Employment and economy
Family, care and care-work
Environment and climate
Theorising emotion and affect
Methodological considerations

In order to make participation as accessible as possible, the symposium will take place over two half days, with one half-day session in the afternoon (Tuesday, 1 July), and one in the morning (Wednesday, 2 July). If you have strict scheduling limitations, please indicate in your abstract submission email whether you are only available for a morning or an afternoon session. We will do what we can to accommodate these requests.

Papers should be maximum 15 minutes (plus 5 minutes for questions), and we welcome diverse and creative forms of presenting. Postgraduates and early career researchers are especially encouraged to contribute.

Please submit abstracts of no more than 250 words to the organisers by midday (GMT) on Friday, 13 June 2025.