 | Dear ~~first_name~~,
Following last week's very successful TASA 2024 conference (despite a few tech hiccups), we want to extend our heartfelt thanks to all of the delegates who helped make the event such a success. Your participation, contributions, and engagement are what make TASA conferences truly special.
We're very happy to advise that the recordings of all three TASA 2024 keynote presentations will be included in next week's newsletter. As for the concurrent session recordings, they will be rolled out gradually starting next year.
While the dust hasn’t yet settled on TASA 2024, we’re thrilled to bring you news of TASA 2025! The National Organising Committee (details below) has already begun planning next year's event, with both the theme and venue confirmed (see logo above).
We’re also introducing a few changes to improve your conference experience in 2025:
- The event will run from Monday to Thursday, November 24–27 (previously Tuesday to Friday).
- The conference will open with a Welcome to Country and a Keynote Address on Monday, November 24th, at 10:30am (AEDT).
- To streamline planning and delivery, Key Dates have been moved forward. Abstract submissions will open next week and close on June 28th, 2025.
More details about TASA 2025 will be available soon, so stay tuned!
National Organising Committee Conference Conveners
- Shaun Wilson (Chair), Vice-president
- Joann Schmider, Indigenous Portfolio Leader
- John Sopar, Indigenous Research Assistant
- Naomi Smith, Thematic Groups Portfolio Leader
- Molly Saunders, Postgraduate Portfolio Leader
- Brendan Churchill, University of Melbourne
- Lutfun Nahar Lata, University of Melbourne
- Penny Toth, Events Manager
- Sally Daly, Executive Officer
Thank you for being part of our community, and we look forward to sharing more updates soon! In the meantime, please continue reading for this week's news.
| We encourage you to support fellow sociologists by sharing details of your latest publications with them via our weekly 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 email through details of your latest publication/s (fully referenced & with a link, where possible), events, job adverts etc. for the next newsletter, to Sally in TASA Admin. The newsletter is disseminated every Thursday morning.
| Gook, Ben, editor. Libidinal Economies of Crisis Times: The Psychic Life of Contemporary Capitalism. transcript Verlag, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783839456859 [OPEN ACCESS]. | | What is a libidinal economy? How are we psychically hooked into the circuits of the capitalist economy? The contributors to this book question the relevance of a concept that began reappearing in critiques and analyses of capitalist societies since the financial crisis of 2007. The chapters stretch from its philosophical pre-history - including Marx, Spinoza, Cavendish and Ibn Sina - to the term's introduction with Freud and on, via Lyotard, to how online platforms put our psyches to work. Libidinal Economies of Crisis Times is a collection of essays by leading scholars about the connections among economies, pleasures, and desires. Read on... | | | Gook, Ben. “Libido, Economy, Crisis.” Libidinal Economies of Crisis Times: The Psychic Life of Contemporary Capitalism, edited by Ben Gook, transcript Verlag, 2024, pp. 7–40, https://doi.org/10.1515/9783839456859-001 [OPEN ACCESS].
Gook, Ben. “The Renewed Desire for the Critique of Libidinal Economy: Pain, Stress, Flesh.” Libidinal Economies of Crisis Times: The Psychic Life of Contemporary Capitalism, edited by Ben Gook, transcript Verlag, 2024, pp. 315–57, https://doi.org/10.1515/9783839456859-015 [OPEN ACCESS].
| Mark A C Jennings, “My Whole Life Was the Two Suburbs That Surrounded the Church”: LGBTQ+ Participation in Australian Pentecostal-Charismatic Churches as “Greedy Institutions”, Sociology of Religion, 2024;, srae034, https://doi.org/10.1093/socrel/srae034
Patulny, R., & Petrolo, B. (2024). Are we softly constructing more inclusive males? An examination of men’s interpersonal emotion work for children and partners. Emotions and Society (published online ahead of print 2024). https://doi.org/10.1332/26316897Y2024D000000047
Johnson, B., Shakes, P. & Maylea, C. (2024) Prenatal testing technologies in Australia: Unintended clinical and emotional complexities in underprepared systems. Social Science & Medicine, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2024.117368 [OPEN ACCESS].
Louie, Y. M., & Vasil, S. (2024). Breaking the silence: exploring the sociocultural context of domestic violence for Chinese migrant women in Australia. Journal of Gender-Based Violence (published online ahead of print 2024). https://doi.org/10.1332/23986808Y2024D000000052
| O’Donnell, James and Guan, Qing, with Prentice, Trish. “Mapping Social Cohesion 2024.” Melbourne, Australia: Scanlon Foundation Research Institute, November 19, 2024. DOI: 10.60836/2cqd-qe78. An expert advisory group helped to guide and oversee the 2024 study that included fellow member Rouven Link. For more information and to download the report, read on... Recordings of the launch event and Q&A webinar can be accessed here.
| | Members' Work in Progress
| Conferences are great for feedback and ideas and TASA 2024 has generated some terrific suggestions. We are implementing one of those ideas today! Starting from this newsletter, as well as any publications you may have to contribute, we are inviting you to share your work-in-progress.
Please submit your work-in-progress in a Word document by Wednesday for inclusion in the Thursday edition. We look forward to showcasing your work and fostering collaboration within our community.
| The Sociological Association of Ukraine are reaching out to all sociological associations around the globe seeking our support during an incredibly challenging time. Since the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Kharkiv University has apparently endured eight strikes on its buildings, causing damages exceeding 115 million USD. They urgently need support to secure the facilities and keep the School functional through the cold winter months.
| Global Healthcare Systems and Violence Against Women and Girls
Special Issue
Health Sociology Review, Volume 33, Issue 2 (2024)
To access all articles of the special issue, read on...
| | Other Events, News & Opportunities | | Thesis Eleven Annual Lecture: Who is afraid of decoloniality? Knowledge, Language and Culture as India’s new battlegrounds
TODAY Thursday, December 5 · 5:30 - 7:30pm AEDT
Melbourne CBD
Speaker: Ira Raja, an academic and researcher specialising in contemporary Indian literature and cultural theory.
| | | Music and Mediation
9-10 June 2025
Conference at the Elder Conservatorium of Music, University of Adelaide
Keynote speaker: Naomi Sunderland, Director, Creative Arts Research Institute, Griffith University
Mediation, in all its senses, from transmission to conflict resolution, is particularly relevant in times of technological innovation, sustainability challenges, forced displacement and struggles for equality or survival. This conference, generously supported by the Musicological Society of Australia (MSA), is concerned with the ways music and the study of music may contribute to the many theories and practices around mediation.
Abstract submission deadline: 16 December. Read on....
| Sorrento Creative Writing Prize
The Prize celebrates the annual Sorrento Writers Festival and its mission to bring writers and readers together. The winner will receive $5,000 and their writing featured at the 2025 Sorrento Writers Festival and at www.writing.org.au.
| Routledge Studies in Gender and the Criminal Legal System
Edited by fellow member Annette Bromdal et al.
This exciting new book series has been established to create and enable a body of research that will inform debates and policy surrounding gender within and around the criminal legal system.
| Special Issues - Call for Submissions
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Cognition histories and sociology as tools for open theological reflection
Open Theology
Guest Editor: fellow member Neville Buch
Save the date - submissions will be open from January 1st, 2025.
Algorithms in Health and Medicine: Sociological Inquiries into Current Disruptions and Future Imaginaries
Sociology of Health & Illness
This special issue aims to expand the sociological theorising of digital transformations in health care and medicine, focusing specifically on algorithmic (including AI and data-driven) technologies. Papers are sought that will address increasingly important, and yet still emergent, matters of concern in the provision of healthcare and medicine and imaginaries of their futures.
Abstract submission deadline: 6 January, 2025. Read on...
Multiplicities in Qualitative Research
Methods in Psychology
Note, Methods in Psychology is an Open Access publication, but Article Processing Charges will be waived for all articles accepted for this Special Issue.
Qualitative research can frequently involve multiplicities in a range of ways. We collect data from multiple people, as when working with focus groups, couples, parents and children, affinity groups, and so on. We may engage in multiple data collections, using multiple interviews over time in longitudinal research, or using multiple methods to collect different forms of data. We may also involve multiple perspectives on analysis and interpretation, or in seeking data from different actors connected to an event of process. These uses of multiplicity raise issues for how we work, how they should be managed, and why they are valuable.
Submission deadline: 30 April, 2025. Read on...
Aging Out of Out-of-Home Care: New services, sustaining support and tackling system failures
Call for Papers in Child and Family Social Work
Guest Editors: fellow members Joel McGregor, Ben Lohmeyer, and colleague Alhassan Abdullah
The age at which young people age out of care, and the support offered to them post-care, varies significantly across state, national and international boundaries. Yet, there is an international momentum for extending the age of young people exiting care including in multiple states of Australia, the USA and the UK. In response to the global movements to extend care for young people in out-of-home care into their early 20s, this special issue aims to instigate an international foundation for a new research and practice agenda for improving young people’s transition out of out-of-home care and their journey towards independent living.
Submission Deadline: April 30, 2025. Read on...
Incarceration and health
Scientific Reports
Original research into incarceration and health, including studies on the health of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals and their families and healthcare within correctional facilities are welcome.
Guest editors include fellow member Annette Bromdal.
|  | The Jobs & Scholarships Board allows you to view opportunities that TASA Admin and fellow members have posted.
In 4 easy steps, you can upload job & scholarship opportunities from your member's profile screen. For instructions, visit here.
The Jobs & Scholarships Board is a public facing searchable feature of TASAweb.
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 | TASA’s Executive Committee (EC) governs the Association and manages its daily business as outlined in the Constitution and by established policies. A call for nominations for the 2027 – 2028 Executive term will be disseminated on July 1, 2026.
The November 2024 - November 2026 Executive Team can be viewed on TASAweb here.
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 | TASA was officially established under the name of the Sociological Association of Australia and New Zealand (SAANZ) in 1963, crystallising what was a long, and perhaps delayed process of the discipline’s development in Australia.
For the 50th anniversary celebrations in 2013, pages on TASA's history were added to TASAweb.
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 | The more members TASA has, the stronger our association can be.
To help spread the word about TASA, you can quickly and easily gift a TASA membership to someone from within your TASA membership profile.
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 | | TASA members have free 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 online resources. |
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 | TASA currently has 27 thematic groups in operation and members can join up to 4 groups. This can be done quickly, and easily via your membership profile.
Watch the very short video (1:30) to learn how to join a thematic group/s.
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 | TASA's Membership Directory allows you to search for members by country and state. It also has search functions for members of a particular thematic group, and members who are available for supervision and/or mentoring.
To learn how to search the Membership Directory, watch this very short video (1 min).
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 | Via your membership profile, you can update many options including adding a secondary email address, and indicating if you are available for mentoring, supervising, consulting, and/or talking to the media, for example. If you are in a Tier 2, Tier 3 & Tier 4 membership category, you can also opt in or out of receiving a hard copy of the Journal of Sociology.
All of these changes can be done quickly and easily. To learn how, watch this video (1 min). |
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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.
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 | 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 email through details of your latest publication/s (fully referenced & with a link, where possible), events, job adverts etc. for the next newsletter, to TASA Admin. Usually, the newsletter is disseminated every Thursday morning. |
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 | As part of the agreement with Taylor & Francis, TASA members are entitled to a 30% books discount. This discount is valid on any full priced CRC Press or Routledge book.
To access the book discount, click on the following link and then log in to TASAweb: book discount link. |
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TASA Admin (Sally): admin@tasa.org.au
TASA Events (Penny): events@tasa.org.au | |