 | Dear ~~first_name~~,
The countdown is on for TASA 2026 abstract submissions, with just days to go before the 24 April deadline. If you are planning on presenting at this years conference, please note the submission deadline and contact Penny (events@tasa.org.au) if you have any questions. The deadline for conference bursary applications is also 24 April. More details about the conference, including the submission links, are available on our TASA 2026 web pages here.
Not far behind is the deadline for the Raewyn Connell Prize (30 April).
If you know someone who might like to submit an abstract, nominate a book, or apply for a bursary but is not yet a TASA member, please invite them to contact Ali at membership@tasa.org.au to discuss joining. We also offer Gift Memberships, a handy option if you have a colleague, student, or research partner you would like to introduce to TASA by gifting them a 12-month membership.
Alongside these important reminders, this edition features a range of TASA news and opportunities, including a new Monash University position, recent member publications, updates from our thematic groups, upcoming TASA Thursdays events, and a postgraduate masterclass.
Warm regards,
TASA Team
| We extend a warm welcome to new members Ash Barnes, Hannah Blackwell, Sierra Bromwich, Merry Jean Caparas, Sal Clark, Julie Fullarton, Ran Hai, Alison McFadyen, Maegan Miccelli, Joshua Pocius, Sanjay Sharma, Kuo-Feng Tseng, Erin Williams and Qian Yang.
We hope you find lots of useful information in this week's TASA newsletter. It's great to have you with us.
Thanks also to our many renewing members, and to all those members taking up the opportunity to join Thematic and Career Stage Groups, a great way to get the most out of TASA membership. If you would like to be part of a TASA group, but aren't quite sure how to do that, please do email Ali at membership@tasa.org.au.
| | TASA THURSDAYS -TRANS LIVES | 23rd APRIL | 12:30PM AEST
Join us for a TASA Thursdays session next week on 23 April at 12:30pm AEST with renowned sociologist, and fellow member, Raewyn Connell, discussing her new book Trans Lives. This timely talk explores the social, political, and global contexts shaping trans experiences today. Drawing on international case studies, Raewyn examines gender, transition, and the structures that shape trans lives, while addressing the rise of anti-trans movements and the importance of solidarity and social justice.
| | | | TASA THURSDAYS POSTGRAD - TASA's Postgraduate Impact and Engagement Award| 30th APRIL | 12:30PM AEST
Join us on Thursday 30 April for a TASA Thursdays webinar exploring the Postgraduate Impact and Engagement Award. Hosted by Brooklyn Donnelly, TASA's Postgraduate Portfolio Leader, this session will unpack the award’s purpose, criteria, and assessment process. Hear from 2025 winner Natalie Merryman as she shares insights, experiences, and practical tips for applicants. Discover how sociological research can drive meaningful impact and strengthen your application.
| | | | POSTGRADUATE MASTERCLASS | 28 APRIL | 10:30AM | ONLINE
Join us for an interactive online masterclass as part of our TASA Postgraduates 2026 Sociology of What? series. Led by fellow members Lucy Nicholas and Rosie Clare Shorter, this session explores the sociology of gender and sexualities through collaborative, hands-on learning.
Work in small groups to apply theory to your own research and build confidence in using sociological concepts.
Places are limited - apply with a short research outline to participate by Clicking Here. | | | Raewyn Connell Prize
If relevant, we encourage you to consider nominating an eligible first book and to reach out to colleagues or others in your networks who may have published their first book in 2024 or 2025. In case you're not aware, publishers usually cover the cost of books for prize entries. If your publisher wants to charge you for the books, please get in touch with Sally in TASA Admin.
|  | | This annual award recognises the impact and engagement of a Postgraduate TASA member’s scholarship that is of high social value to Australian society and/or sociology. We invite TASA Postgraduate members to submit an application (or nominate others) for outstanding impact or engagement with sociological scholarship. Nominations are also welcome from supervisors or peers.
This award is not limited to publications, but also outstanding contributions in teaching, community work and non-traditional academic outputs.
The award seeks to value and encourage an understanding of scholarship and impact that extends beyond publication and citation metrics. This award draws on the Boyer model of scholarship recognising the value of Discovery, Integration, Application and Teaching.
|  | TASA's Prize for the most distinguished peer-reviewed article published by an Early Career Researcher is an annual process that uses academic peer review to select a paper of outstanding quality published (online or in print) in any journal during the previous three calendar years (ie the 2026 Award will assess papers that were published from 2023 – 2025). The Prize was established in 2016 to provide more opportunities for early career sociologists to gain recognition for the quality of their scholarship and enhance their reputations, especially within interdisciplinary teams.
An 'Early Career' definition can be found on the prize page.
| | |
| TASA's Career Development Grant seeks to support the career development activities of TASA members where these activities are not covered by other funding.
TASA's Career Development Grant is targeted at TASA members who are PhD students, early career (5 years post-PhD) or mid-career members (10 years post-PhD) with career interruptions, considered. The grants are intended for members who have limited or no access to funding for career development activities.
A total of AU$4,500 is available, with a maximum of AU$1,500 available per applicant.
Applications close on 12 May.
| | | | TASA's Gary Bouma Memorial Workshop Funding, for 2027 events, is open for applications. Successful workshops will advance research within sociology and showcase TASA as the face of sociological/interdisciplinary research in the region; engaging with issues of national concern; advancement of knowledge; support innovative ideas, and, the potential of feeding into policy and practice development.
Funding of AU$5,000 (per workshop) available for workshops to be held in Australia.
Applications close on 17 July, 2026.
| | | | Gregory, S., & Huppatz, K. (Eds.). (2026). Motherhood, labour and care in the 21st century: Contradictions in focus. Sydney University Press. | Modern motherhood is marked by contradiction. Recent decades have seen policy changes aimed at facilitating gender equality – such as enhanced paid parental leave and more generous childcare subsidies – alongside cultural shifts in the gendered division of domestic labour and women’s workforce participation. Yet, despite these changes, motherhood continues to be a contested and divisive subject, as well as a site of inequality.
Many households and communities strive for egalitarian relationships and challenge the conflation of women with motherhood; however, essentialist notions of the maternal persist. Norms continue to limit the identities available to mothers, and structural responses to gender inequities often fall short. Tensions are therefore present in lived experiences of motherhood. Read on...
| | | Journals
Watts, A., Clark, E., & Munday, J. (2026). Dr Howard Whitaker and LSD-assisted therapy at Mayday Hills Psychiatric Hospital, Beechworth, Victoria, Australia. Journal of Australian Studies, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/14443058.2026.2655773. (open access).
Li, B., Li, Y., Morris, A., & Katz, I. (2026). Local Government Adaptation for Dispersed CALD Ageing Communities: Responding to Demographic Misfit. Urban Policy and Research, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/08111146.2026.2650435
Muoneke, O.B., Tan, Y. & Robinson, G. (2026). The vicious cycle: How institutional and technological lock-ins subvert private investment in renewable energy in Emerging Asia. Energy Sources, Part B: Economics, Planning and Policy, 21(1). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/15567249.2026.2642771. (open access).
Friese, S., Nguyen-Trung, K., Powell, S., & Morgan, D. L. (2026). Beyond Binary Positions: Making Space for Critical and Reflexive GenAI Integration in Qualitative Research. Qualitative Inquiry, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/10778004261429393. (open access).
Reports
Op-ed / Commentary
Xanthe Weston, Joel Robert McGregor, & Raquel Peel (2026) From joyrides to assault, ‘crimefluencer’ networks are coercing young people into breaking the law. The Conversation, April 8.
Guest Editorship
Keith Noble, Sintezo magazine Vol 8.
| We are delighted to introduce the three new conveners of the Cultural Sociology Thematic Group: Carl Anacin (Griffith University), Taylor Richardson-Marlton (Griffith University), and Don McArthur (Monash University). We look forward to their leadership in continuing the strong engagement and activity of this well-established and vibrant group within TASA.
We would also like to extend a special thank you to Sara James (La Trobe University), a long-standing and former convener of the group, who has generously agreed to take on a senior advisory role to support the new team.
|  | Carljohnson Anacin, PhD (Griffith University, Australia), is an academic at Griffith University and the University of Queensland in Australia. He received his PhD (cultural sociology) at Griffith University with a thesis on Filipino migrant musician identity, musicality and translocality. He is currently working on the ARC-funded project Voice & Belonging with researchers from Griffith University and UNSW, and co-leading a project on Temporary Migrants as Transnational Musicians, funded by the Australian National University Philippines Institute, in collaboration with Griffith University, RMIT, University of the Philippines, and Central Mindanao University. Carl is a member of the Creative Arts Research Institute and the Griffith Social and Cultural Research Centre. Carl is also the 2025 Letty Katts Fellow at the State Library of Queensland, working on the project Migration, Musical Practices and Belonging among Filipino Migrants in Queensland. Read on...
|  | | Taylor is an early career feminist researcher who recently completed an Honours thesis that explored the affective and material-discursive dynamics of freebirth, how these dynamics inform mothering, and how they imbue women’s lives. The project illuminated the complex political and ethical multiplicities women experience in their matrescent rites of passage while birthing, a new research paradigm in which situated knowledges are at the forefront. Taylor works with feminist, new material, post human, postqualitative (FNMPHPQ) ethico-onto-epistemologies and arts-based, co-creative methods to challenge the traditional scope of what academia considers to be rigorous and valid research. She was recently awarded TASA's Honours/Masters Student Award for the top sociology student at Griffith University for her Honours thesis. Read on... | | |
Don McArthur is a researcher at Monash University. Don's current work focuses on the lived experience of Jewish, Muslim and Palestinian students facing Islamophobia, antisemitism and anti-Palestinian prejudice, and related issues of academic freedom and free speech.
Cultural sociology was the main theoretical framework for Don's PhD on the work of the Australian climate movement. (The focus was on the Alexander-Smith tradition in this field.) The PhD research investigated how the Australian climate movement used images, narratives and "political theatre" to make climate change visible and compelling and shift the "political climate".
Don's work on this has been developed into a website, "Stories and Images" on the place of imagery and narrative in the work of the climate movement and other social movements. See https://storiesandimages.net
| | | Doing media diversity in the west: between reckoning and reaction
Call for Submissions
Journal of Sociology 2027 Special Issue
This issue will explore experiences, debates and theorisations of media diversity in the grip of reckoning, reaction and crisis. It aims to build on the growing field of studies of experiences of media diversity and newsroom cultures—especially those focused on how ‘doing diversity’ is experienced by those charged with ‘being the diversity’ or enacting such changes.
| New: Journal of Sociology, 62 (1)
McKenzie, L., Tomkinson, S., & Attwell, K. (2026). ‘I leave most of the decisions up to her:’ Gendered parenting, un/equal decision work, and responsibility for COVID-19 vaccination. Journal of Sociology, 62(1), 3-23.
Imray Papineau, E., & Bennett, A. (2026). Do-it-yourself lifestyle movements in grassroots activist communities: A case study of Brisbane, Australia. Journal of Sociology, 62(1), 24-41.
Schmidt, M., Aberdeen, L., Carlon, C., & Eversole, R. (2026). Invisible innovation: Intellectual labour on regional university campuses in Australia. Journal of Sociology, 62(1), 42-62.
Sun, Y. (2026). Grafted Beauty, Complex Identity: Exploring Female Rural-to-Urban Migrant Workers in China’s Beauty Service Industry. Journal of Sociology, 62(1), 63-82.
Foeken, E. (2026). Who enjoys being busy? On busyness as a gendered norm and technology of the self. Journal of Sociology, 62(1), 83-99.
Azeredo, R., & Casado, R. (2026). Problematising ‘visa determinism’: Contested and multifaceted migratory identities among student visa holders in Australia. Journal of Sociology, 62(1), 100-116.
Khan, C. (2026). Resilience and Forced Healing: The Therapisation of Social Care in an Australian Workfare Programme. Journal of Sociology, 62(1), 117-136.
Chua, V., Chew, H.-E., Tan, I., & Lee, P. (2026). Entangled Transitions: How COVID-19 Widened Well-Being Gaps Among Youth in Singapore (2017–2022). Journal of Sociology, 62(1), 137-157.
| Applications are invited for the editorship of Health Sociology Review (HSR) for the three-year term 2027 - 2029.
Transition arrangements will begin later in 2026, although the content for the first issue of 2027, and possibly the second, will be finalised by the out-going editorial team.
The application deadline is Monday 22nd June, 2026.
The full details of the call are available on TASAweb here.
| Scholarship Opportunities
| Creating Safer Sport Communities from Rural to Urban Australia
This is part of an ARC Discovery project Creating Safer Sport Communities from Rural to Urban Australia
The PhD will be housed within Griffith University’s Centre for Social and Cultural Research, Arts, Education and Law group and the Department of Tourism and Marketing, Griffith Business School.
| New: Research Fellow
Monash University, Clayton
The School of Social Sciences is seeking a Level B research-only candidate to undertake independent and collaborative research within a multidisciplinary project, Empowering households in resource-efficient sustainability transitions, in partnership with Monash University, RMIT, and the University of Manchester.
An opportunity to work with fellow member Jo Lindsay.
Lecturer in Geography, Sociology and Political Science
Hong Kong Baptist University
The role includes teaching courses in human geography, physical geography, public administration, general sociology, statistics, research methods, and advanced topics in quantitative analysis across these disciplines.
| Other Events, News & Opportunities
|
New: Child Support, Systems Abuse and the Federal Budget
Online, 20 April, 12:00pm (AEST)
Thanks to TASA members Kay Cook and Adi Byrt for their invitation to TASA members to attend a webinar launching a new research report on Fembot Debts. These debts involve the automatic recouping of FTB overpayments that result primarily from ex-partners lodging late tax returns which triggers the retrospective recalculation of child support assessments. Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Commissioner, Micaela Cronin will chair the session, framing the issues that single mothers experience within the context of systems abuse. Following an overview of the report’s findings presented by Professor Kay Cook and Dr Adrienne Byrt, Dr Terese Edwards will chair a panel comprised of the Commonwealth Ombudsman, Iain Anderson, the Inspector General of Taxation and Taxation Ombudsman, Ruth Owen and expert by experience, Juanita McClaren who will reflect on their recent reports on financial abuse and weaponisation of the child support and taxation systems, and the impact of these systems on single mothers, respectively. Finally, Dr Terese Edwards from Single Mother Families Australia will present a short video on how the child support system harms women.
| New: The Paul Bourke Awards for Early Career Research
Academy of Social Sciences Australia
The Paul Bourke Awards for Early Career Research honour Australians in the early part of their career who have achieved excellence in scholarship in one or more fields of the social sciences.
| UNSW Social Policy Research Centre’s (SPRC) short course, Understanding Poverty, Inequality and Social Disadvantage in Australia, is returning in 2026 following three sold-out iterations.
5 May to 23 June
| National survey seeking participants
| Sport and physical activity experiences of women/girls/nonbinary people with disability
The survey is intended for woman/girl/nonbinary person with disability aged 16+, regardless of how much sport you do or do not play.
| The Rechnitz Fund Grant Program
Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia
This research funding program is intended to support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to develop their careers as researchers across the social sciences.
Application deadline: TOMORROW 17 April. Read on...
| Seminars
ANU School of Sociology Seminar Series
The program for the ANU School of Sociology Seminar Series is now online. All seminars are hybrid, with options to join via Zoom. Please visit the School’s Humanitix page, here, to view and register for upcoming seminars.
Newcastle Youth Studies Centre (NYSC) 2026 Online Seminar Series
The full 2026 program for the Newcastle Youth Studies Centre’s online seminar series is now out (see below), you can check out each seminar, and register for them, at the NYSC Eventbrite page here.
Note, you can watch the full 2025 recordings at the NYSC's YouTube playlist here.
| Conferences
10th Biennial Social Science Methodology Conference
November 24-26, University of Sydney
Sport, Politics, and Society
The Tunisian-Mediterranean Association for Historical, Social and Economic Studies (TMA for HSES) and the Tunisian World Center for Studies, Research, and Development (TWC for SRD)
December 1, 2, 3 / 2026 (Beja - Tunisia).
Digital and Sexual Citizenship in an Age of Social Media Bans: Interrogating the Rights of Children and Young People
Initiative of the ECU Ethical Digital Futures Group
6-8 July, Perth, in-person only
Abstract and/or panel proposal deadline: 20 April. Read on...
| | Internationalising Vegan Sociology
International Association of Vegan Sociologists (IAVS)
Online, October 3 & 4, 2026
The 2026 IAVS annual meeting will showcase research related to veganism, animal rights, and sociological theories of international relevance. They welcome submissions for individual presentations (15 minutes and an additional 5 for questions) or panels (45 minutes with 15 for questions) to be delivered in an online format.
| | | Call for Editors
Journal of Intercultural Studies - call for Associate Editors
Applicants with expertise in cultural studies and postcolonial literature; decolonial studies; race/ethnicity/migration studies are encouraged to apply. Our Associate Editors are based in different locations around the world - applicants from diverse geographies are encourged. Feel free to reach out to the current editors-in-chief if you have any specific queries.
Expression of Interest deadline: 20 April. Read on...
| Call for Submissions
Social Conditions, Clinical Logics: Rethinking Young People’s Engagement with Drug Treatment
International Journal of Drug Policy
This special issue invites submissions that explore or examine how the social conditions of young people’s substance use shape their engagement in drug treatment. Editors are looking for papers that critically explore, among other things, biomedical and psychologised approaches to AOD care, how contexts of crisis and social inequity shape treatment experience, and how treatment might be experienced differently by First Nations, LGBTQ+, refugee, migrant and racialized youth.
Serendipities. Journal for the Sociology and History of the Social Sciences
If you would like to propose a special issue for their collection, please feel free to discuss this with the Managing Editors. If your ideas are further advanced, you are welcome to send them a one-to-two page proposal.
Managing Editors:
- Fran Collyer, University of Wollongong Australia, Fran@francollyer.com
- Kristoffer Kropp, Roskilde University, Denmark, kkropp@ruc.dk
You can find more information about our journal here.
Humanities and Social Sciences Communications
The guest editors of this journal are seeking submissions for the forthcoming edition ‘Reframing artificial intelligence: Critical perspectives from AI social science’
In an era increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence (AI), public and academic discourse is often dominated by polarised narratives—either heralding AI as a solution to complex problems or warning of its dangers … this Collection invites social science perspectives to advance the study of AI’s sociotechnical, cultural and political dimensions.
Submission deadline: 30 April. Read on...
| For membership information, processes, and frequently used resources, visit the Members' Navigator. To contact a member of the team directly, see our TASA Staff page.
| Admin (Sally): admin@tasa.org.au
Events (Penny): events@tasa.org.au
Membership (Ali): membership@tasa.org.au
Indigenous (Yasmin): indigenoussociology@tasa.org.au
Digital Publications Editor (Roger): digitalpe@tasa.org.au
Thematic Groups (Molly): thematicgroups@tasa.org.au
Postgraduates (Brooklyn): postgraduates@tasa.org.au | |