Dear ~~first_name~~,
We're excited to announce the theme for this year's conference, being hosted by Curtin University, which is Living Now: Social Worlds & Political Landscapes. The submission portal is now open! Abstracts need to be connected to the conference theme and submitted by Monday 3 June. More details soon.
| We extend our warm congratulations to Siwen Liu who was the top Sociology Honours student at the University of Sydney last year. As a reminder, the Honours/Masters Student Award is given annually to the best Honours/Masters student in Sociology in each Australian university. Each winner receives a one-year student membership to TASA, making the student eligible for conference discounts, membership of Thematic Groups, the weekly members’ newsletter, online access to sociology journals (full text) and self-promotion opportunities in Nexus.
To date, we have only received nominations from three Universities; the University of New South Wales - Jacqueline Price, the University of Queensland - Caitlin Gordon-King and the University of Sydney - Siwen Liu.
For the Honours/Masters Award details, and to nominate your top Honours/Masters student in Sociology, read on...
| | Save the Date - Book Club
| We are pleased to announce that the next TASA Book Club session hosted by Aisling Bailey, our Equity and Inclusion portfolio leader, will be held on Thursday March 28th at 7pm (AEDT). The book that will be discussed is Open Minds: Academic freedom and freedom of speech in Australia by Carolyn Evans and Adrienne Stone, 2021, La Trobe University Press. (Available on Kindle.)
| Join us on Thursday 21st March 2024, for this month's TASA Thursday session which will be presented by guest speaker, fellow member and our 2023 Early Career Research Best Paper Prize winner, Lutfun Nahar Lata. This session is titled "The production of counter-space: Informal labour, social networks and the production of urban space in Dhaka."
Event Details:
Date: Thursday 21st March 2024
Time: 12:30pm - 1:30pm (AEDT)
Format: Zoom Webinar
Cost: complimentary
REGISTER HERE
| | Thematic Groups - Call for New Conveners
| Amazingly, we only have one group now that needs a convener/s; Risk Societies. This group will need to be disbanded if we don't have a convener in place in time for the March 19th Executive Meeting. If you have an interest in the Risk Societies group, but have doubts about your ability or your level of experience etc., or would like to know about what is involved, please contact Tom Barnes and/or Sally in TASA Admin asap.
| | Thematic Group Conveners: 2024/2025 | This week we are introducing you to the new conveners for the Rural Issues Thematic Group; Melissa Phillips and Martina Boese:
|  | | Melissa is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Social Sciences (Western Sydney University). Her research interests include rural/regional migration, mobility/displacement, migrant and refugee settlement (especially into rural areas), diasporas and migration policies. She has over 10+ years experience as a field-based practitioner and has sat on national boards for organisations such as Australian Red Cross, International Detention Coalition and the Swedish Observatory for Human Rights Information. She is currently a co-managing Editor for the Journal of Intercultural Studies. Melissa is currently part of an ARC Linkage Project Settling well in regional Australia a longitudinal, comparative assessment of the impacts of the settlement of people from refugee backgrounds in regional Australia, for both people from refugee backgrounds themselves and the communities in which they settle.
|  | Martina is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at La Trobe University. Her research has focused on regional and rural migration, settlement and mobilities, migrant employment experiences in horticulture and other rural and regional industries, and the governance of regional and rural migration and migrant work. This has included research in partnership with community sector and government representatives. Martina’s publications have also explored the roles of different actors and institutions in rural and regional migration, the relationship between social and spatial mobilities, precariousness, intersections of race, class and migrant status, migrant agency and belonging in regional and rural Australia.
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This week we are also introducing you to the new conveners for the Environment & Society Thematic Group; Kim Spurway, Danielle Nembhard & Matshepo Molala:
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Kim Spurway is a Senior Research Associate with the Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney University. Kim’s research interests include critical approaches to humanitarian emergencies, natural disasters, climate change, Indigenous cultural approaches to natural disasters, and gender/sexuality diversity. Kim’s current projects focus on community-based disaster resilience learning in New South Wales as well as Indigenous gender/sexuality diverse people’s intersectionality and aspirations regarding socio-cultural wellbeing in Australia.
|  | Matshepo is a PhD candidate at Western Sydney University, where she graduated with her Master of Research in 2022. Her research focuses on investigating the nexus between faith and climate change, specifically, resilience and adaptation amongst marginalised communities. She is a sessional academic and research assistant in the School of Social Sciences at WSU.
She is co-author of the Roadmap: We belong here: Framework for human rights and equity for Australians of African descent. A response to the United Nations Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent Recommendations following their mission to Australia in 2022, commissioned by the African Australian Advocacy Centre and supported by Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology and Western Sydney University.
Matshepo has a Master of Science and Technology in Environmental Science from University of New South Wales. She mentors students from marginalised communities studying or planning to study at universities in Australia. | | |
| Dani is a transdisciplinary environmental and social scientist and aspiring scholar-activist, specialising in the rights and interests of marginalised and First Peoples, and strengthening bridges between academic research and action, to progress systemic transformations. As a doctoral candidate in Society & Culture at The Cairns Institute (James Cook University), her research uses intersectional theory for a multiscale, historically grounded exploration of how power mediates mechanisms designed to support Indigenous-led ecological restoration and environmental governance on the Great Barrier Reef Sea Country. Dani has previously worked in environmental consulting where she collaborated on and led projects in environmental management, climate adaptation, disaster risk reduction and social change across the Caribbean, Australia and the Philippines.
| | | This week we are also introducing you to the new convener for the Social Theory Thematic Group; Carlos Eduardo Morreo:
|  | | Carlos Eduardo Morreo teaches the history of ideas at Trinity College, University of Melbourne, and is editor of Green Agenda, a project of The Green Institute (Canberra). Until early 2023, Carlos was the executive officer of the independent Institute of Postcolonial Studies (IPCS) in Naarm/Melbourne. Previously he was a lecturer in social theory at the Universidad Central de Venezuela in Caracas.
Carlos' writing and research focuses primarily on the the intersections of race, economy, and environment, drawing on postcolonial studies and southern genealogies of theory. He completed his PhD with the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University (2020), writing on the politics and economisation of oil in the Caribbean and the Amazon.
Carlos collaborates with several editorial projects, including Bandung: Journal of the Global South, Alternatives: global, local, political, and Postcolonial Interventions. In 2019 he co-edited (with Elise Klein), Postdevelopment in Practice: Alternatives, Economies, Ontologies (Routledge).
| | | The nomination deadline for the below 2024 TASA Awards is July 17th:
Note, applications for TASA2024 bursaries will open on Monday July 22nd and close on Monday August 19th.
| New: Postdoctoral Fellow
University of New South Wales
As the Research Fellow, working with fellow member Emma Kirby, you will primarily work with academic and partner investigators on a project funded by an Australian Research Council Linkage Project Grant “When caring ends”
Application deadline: March 31st. Read on...
New: Assistant or Associate Professor
Hong Kong Shue Yan University, sociology department
Starting in September
Applications will remain open until the position is filled. Read on...
New: Visiting Professor
Seoul National University
Commencement of position: January – February 2025
| The Jobs Board enables you to view current employment opportunities. As a member, you can post opportunities to the Jobs Board directly from within your membership profile screen.
| | | PhD Scholarship
Swinburne University
A candidate is sought with an interest in exploring how housing instability and homelessness are drivers of youth justice involvement, and how housing might be an effective intervention for desistance from crime. While the candidate will be given the opportunity to develop their own research topic and proposal, it is expected that they will broadly align with the project: A place to call home: developing a sustainable housing intervention model for homeless young people involved with the justice system, led by Professor Wendy Stone and fellow member Dr Joel McGregor.
PhD Scholarship - Music making in Australia
Applications are invited for enrolment in a scholarship-supported doctoral study associated with an Australian Research Council Discovery project that explores digital music making in regional Australia. The PhD project topic is deliberately open to allow candidates to develop their own specific ideas and interests drawing on their existing skills and experience, subject to negotiation with supervisors. However, in order to align with the overall project, topics that focus on areas such as the following are particularly welcome:
• Music making in regional Australia
• The intersections of grassroots music making and government policy and infrastructure in urban or regional settings
• Musicians’ utilisation of ‘maker spaces’
• Social inequalities in digital music making.
The successful applicant will supervised by three of the Chief Investigators on the ARC project (all TASA members), Associate Professor Catherine Strong (RMIT), Professor Andy Bennett (Griffith) and Dr Ben Green (Griffith).
Please contact Catherine Strong for more information (catherine.strong@rmit.edu.au)
PhD Scholarship
University of Melbourne
Supervisor: fellow member Ash Barnwell
The proposed PhD project offers an original sociological study about how secrets and practices of secret-keeping around sexual lives have changed over time in Australian society.
For the full details, and to submit your expression of interest, read on...
| | The Scholarships Board enables you to view available scholarships that our members have posted. Like the Jobs Board, as a member, you can post scholarship opportunities directly from within your membership profile screen. | | | | In case you are not aware, you can add job and scholarship opportunities to our publicly searchable Jobs & Scholarships Board via your TASA membership profile, see image below: | | Other Events, News & Opportunities | Marie Jahoda Summer School of Sociology 2024 at the University of Vienna
| New: Marie Jahoda Summer School of Sociology
Department of Sociology, University of Vienna, Austria
Topic: “Crises, Justice, Democracy”
Date: Monday, July 8th - Friday, July 12th, 2024
For details, read on...
| Call for Submissions - Journals
| Special issue focussed on Culturally Responsive Qualitative Health Research
Qualitative Health Research
Anticipated publication of Special Issue: March 2025
Deadline for submissions: July 1. Read on....
European Review of Applied Sociology
Issue no. 28/2024
Deadline for submissions: March 15, here.
Criminology in Post-Violence Transitions: Exploring the Intersections between Human Rights, Grassroots Activism, Transitional Justice, Memory, and Criminology
International Journal for Crime, Justice, and Social Democracy
Deadline for initial submissions: April 1st. Read on...
Blood Ties and Politics: The Influence of Political Polarization upon Family Life
Contemporary Perspectives in Family Research Special Issue
Deadline for initial submissions: April 15. Read on...
| Aging Out of Out-of-Home Care
Collected Edition and Symposium
Editors: fellow members Joel McGregor and Ben Lohmeyer as well as Wendy Stone
Chapter proposals, of a maximum of 250 words, that showcase the work of researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and advocates, are due by March 31. Read on...
| Future of Work in the Global South and Global North
2-3 May, 2024, The University of Melbourne
Abstract submission deadline: 10 March. Read on...
| The Kohli Prize for Sociology
The Kohli Prize for Sociology honors exceptional achievement in and contributions to the field and profession of sociology. The Kohli Prize is rewarded with 50.000 EUR.
| Second World Conference for Religious Dialogue and Cooperation
June 19-22, 2024 Strumica, North Macedonia (Hotel Sirius)
Abstract submission deadline: April 15th. Read on...
World Conference for Religious Dialogue and Cooperation
Strumica, North Macedonia from June 19 to 22
Abstract submission deadline: April 15th. Read on...
| Social Sciences Week 2024
9-15 September 2024
SSW2024 promises to be even more fun, insightful and intelligent than ever before. So mark your calendars, spread the word and get ready for a week of activities.
| Gift memberships, for any membership category, can now be accessed at anytime via your membership profile screen. If you would like to gift a membership, to someone new or to a current member, please follow the steps below:
STEP 1: Click here and log in
STEP 2: Click on the drop down menu to the right of your name in the purple bar (RH) at the top of the website (see 1st image below)
STEP 3: Click on Profile (see 1st image below)
STEP 4: Click on the Gift Memberships menu item and complete the details, see yellow highlights in 2nd image below. | | Submitting Newsletter Items | | We encourage you to support your colleagues by sharing details of your latest publications with them via this newsletter. No publication is too big or too small. Any mention of sociology is of value to our association, and to the discipline, so please do send through details of your latest publication (fully referenced & with a link, where possible) for the next newsletter, to TASA Admin. Usually, the newsletter is disseminated every Thursday morning. | | Updating your Member Profile | Personal pronoun preferences can be added to your profile. There are 9 combination options to choose from. Please let Sally in TASA Admin know if your preference/s is not on the list and we will have them added.
| | TASA Documents and Policies | In case you are not aware, you can access details of TASA's current Executive Committee 2023 - 2024, and their respective portfolios, as well as documents and policies, including the Constitution, Values Statement, Statement on Academic Freedom, Code of Conduct, Grievance Procedures, Safe & Inclusive Events, Sustainable Events and TASA History.
| | Accessing Online Materials & Resources | | TASA members have access to over 90 peer-reviewed Sage Sociology full-text collection online journals encompassing over 63,000 articles. The image on the left shows you where to access those journals, as well as the Sage Research Methods Collection & the Taylor and Francis Full Text Collection, when logged in to TASAweb. If needed, here is a short instructive video on how to access the journals. | | | TASA Admin (Sally): admin@tasa.org.au
TASA Events (Penny): events@tasa.org.au | |