Sport Healing and Social Justice
February 2025
Organiser: Adele Pavlidis
Venue: Ship Inn, Southbank Brisbane

This workshop is an invitation to State and Local Governments representatives, creative researchers, academics and community leaders to rethink how we conceive of ‘barriers’ or ‘constraints’ to sport participation with a focus on diverse girls, women and non-binary people. The workshop will center discussions on mental health, healing and social justice and how sports can function as a social conduit through which these difficulties can be challenged and reimagined. Leveraging off the increased focused on sport both after the Paris 2024 Olympic Games and in view to Brisbane 2032 Olympics, this workshop will promote and enhance both the discipline of sociology, and TASA in several ways: The workshop will serve as a platform to promote discussions and dissemination of innovative sociological work around embodiment, intersectional gendered approaches, and decolonial thinking. Sociological work is at the cutting edge of thinking in terms of culture, belonging and inclusion/exclusion. Through a focus on healing and social justice a fresh lens will be brought on questions of sport participation and the age-old issue of ‘barriers and constraints’ to sport and leisure. The workshop will showcase TASA as the face of sociological research by platforming innovative ERCs, more established academics, and practitioners who are committed to social justice in sport. Social media posts will be shared in the lead up to and during and after the event to showcase TASA to a broader audience. We will also develop press releases to try to attract some media to the event. The day will include a series of workshop topics relevant to current policy issues related sport, wellbeing, healing, equity and social justice The workshop will showcase innovative responses to questions of trauma recovery in and through sport by including sport programs that are working in this space.

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Navigating Gender-Based Violence in Superdiverse Societies: An Interdisciplinary Approach
4th February 2025
Organiser: Hyein Ellen Cho
Venue: Menzies Building, Monash University Clayton Campus

This workshop will provide a crucial opportunity to reframe and expand the discussion on gender and violence by using superdiversity as a theoretical and analytical lens. The half-day workshop will bring together postgraduate, early-career and senior researchers from Australia, Japan, South Korea and the United Kingdom. Since the concept of superdiversity emerged in 2007, scholars have explored the mechanisms through which inequalities are (re)produced, utilising superdiversity as a theoretical and analytical framework. While gender is considered an integral aspect of superdiversity, the academic incorporation of gender and violence discussions into the superdiversity discourse has only recently begun. Given that research on superdiversity in Australia is still emerging, this workshop will create a space for academics in the fields of gender, violence and/or migration to convene, share their insights and shed new light on gender and violence discussions. We will place particular emphasis on the experiences of Asian women in the United Kingdom and Australia, examining how their attributes, migration journeys and identities influence and shape their experiences of violence and their access to welfare and social services in superdiverse neighbourhoods. In parallel, we will examine migrant women’s experiences in the Asia–Pacific region, particularly in Japan and South Korea – countries known for their ethno-nationalism and ongoing debates over whether to open their borders and reform migration policies. This workshop will respond to the pressing need for cross-national investigations of gender, violence and migration issues while highlighting transnational (im)mobilities and identities of migrant women in the above countries. At the same time, by including sociologist colleagues from Japan and South Korea and sharing expert knowledge and insights into the contexts of the four countries, we aim to diversify the dominant /Western-centric sociological discussion and initiate an academic discussion that can facilitate new theoretical, empirical, methodological and policy development in the region. By organising a public-facing event that will be interpreted and broadcast in Japanese and Korean to reach a broader audience, this workshop will highlight TASA and Australian sociologists' leadership in the Asia–Pacific region. It will also emphasise our efforts to decolonise the language used in sociological debates and meaningful discussions while bringing sociologists together in the field of superdiversity, migration and gender-based violence.

Skate, Create, Educate and Regenerate: Pushing for Playful, Healthy and Inclusive Cities
January 2024 and October 2024
University of Sydney
Organiser: Indigo Willing

Skateboarding emerged as a leisure practice and youth culture, then a subculture, and is now also an Olympic Sport. Even so, skate culture is often labeled as deviant, restricted in city spaces, and quarantined to skateparks which can further marginalise users and leave heavy footprints on the environment. These workshops invite sociologists, skaters, artists, architecture and urban studies experts, and others to co-design and share research on socially equitable, creative, and sustainable spaces to skate and encourage an exploration of how skateboarding promotes a re-thinking of public space and how to foster more playful, healthy and inclusive cities.

Skateboarding research is an emerging sociological field, present in publications such as Sociology, Leisure Studies, Young Nordic Journal, Cities and Health and in monographs published by Palgrave and Routledge for example. Skate conferences and events overseas have also grown in the past 5 years, such as in Sweden, the UK, the US, France and Aotearoa New Zealand. Australia however has lagged despite being in a strong position to lead new conversations as skateboarding. Now an Olympic sport, several Australians are predicted to win medals at Paris 2024, LA 2028, and the Brisbane 2032 Games. Australian girls are winning gold at the most prestigious and profitable ‘mega-event’ competitions in the world right now, and a young Australian man Keegan Palmer also won gold in skateboarding at the sport’s debut at Tokyo 2020. The ‘Skate, Create, Educate and Regenerate’ project is co-led by a team that includes two early career researchers; Dr Indigo Willing as part of her fellowship at the University of Sydney in 2024 and ARC DECRA ‘ART, RISK, PLAY’ Project leader Dr Sanné Mestrom. The team also includes Associate Professor Lian Loke who curated the Electro Sk8, a mixed performance event incorporating skating, dancing and a light show. The new Skate, Create, Educate and Regenerate project aims to advance sociological and interdisciplinary work on skateboarding and the creative use of public space. The Pushing for Playfu, Healthy and Inclusive Cities Workshops as part of this project aims to bring together sociologists from TASA and experts from other disciplines and fields to advance knowledge on the culture of skateboarding and related practices such as rollerskating, parkour and cycling, and re-imagine the way public space, and urban play is perceived and planned. Key areas to be addressed include: • Breaking Stereotypes: Tackling outdated labeling and perceptions of skate culture (traditionally perceived to be deviant and only for men) by exploring ways to make skateboarding culture more socially inclusive, particularly in terms of marginalised participants (women, non-binary and Queer skaters and disabled skaters). • Re-Imaginging Cities: Addressing why a multi-use public realm is vital to urban sustainability and, therefore, why it is important to integrate skateable opportunities into the public realm so that skateboarders become a valued part of the cultural texture of urban life (alongside other outdoor urban players including cyclists, outdoor gym enthusiasts, roller bladers, parkour enthusiasts and children with their various urban play opportunities). • Community Engaged Public Art and Co-Design: Asking and exploring how to achieve a more multi-use skate-friendly public realm through participant-led design workshops and a full-scale, skateable built concrete prototype. (funding has been secured elsewhere) • Health and Social Benefits: Skateboarding is not just a popular leisure practice enjoyed by youth. It is also a positive source of physical activity for people of all ages and abilities. It is also more than a sport, such as being a subcultural scene able to foster social connections and benefits for marginalised individuals from various backgrounds. • Industry and Institutions Networking: While still having community and grassroots DIY (do it yourself) cultural elements, skateboarding is also a profitable business able to generate significant revenue from streetwear and shoe sales, to offering careers for skaters to be professional athletes, work in events management and areas such as skatepark building and design. Also, as emphasised throughout this application, skating is also an Olympic sport and sociologists can play a leading role in re-thinking its inclusion in ways that are more socially and environmentally aware. These workshops will promote dialogues across these stakeholders and sectors.

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(Re)Imagining menopause beyond gender and sexuality norms

June and November 2024
Sydney, UNSW Paddington campus
Organiser: Kerryn Drysdale

Two hybrid roundtable workshops over one year will bring together experts in health sociology, gender and sexuality studies, arts-based design, sexual and reproductive health, women’s health, and LGBTQ+ health to explore the question: Can menopause be reimagined beyond gender and sexuality norms? The first event, ‘Reimagining Narratives’, will focus on diverse theoretical, empirical and embodied perspectives, while the second event, ‘Reimagining Responses’ will draw on services and supports needs in our current healthcare system; together, these workshops will inform the development of a localised, critical and inclusive sociology of menopause.

From the perspective of the sociology of medicine, menopause is a life stage that is subject to social norms and is conventionally researched within two framings: (i) a medical problem requiring pharmacological intervention; (ii) a disruptive condition that is managed through individual resilience; both of which perpetuate a pathological notion of menopause. While this research has focussed on the health and wellbeing of (white, abled) cisgender women, our imagining of menopause needs to be expanded to encompass the experiences of all people with ovaries, including some transgender men and non-binary people, and people of different abilities and ethnicities. These proposed events will build on an emerging collaborative research program at UNSW Sydney designed to address a significant gap in knowledge of non-normative experiences of menopause. Our interdisciplinary team combines expertise in creative arts and socially engaged design on menopause in cisgender women (Moline) with sociological research on health, gender and sexuality, including reproductive health experiences among marginalised communities (Drysdale and Newman). Our team aims to generate new insights into how significant and culturally complex experiences of menopause can be made more inclusive of those whose bodies, identities or life experiences do not fit gender and sexuality norms, including cisgenderism, compulsory heterosexuality, and the expectation to have children. The aims of the two roundtable workshops will be: 1. To create a dedicated space for menopause to be reimagined through a dialogue across diverse theoretical, empirical and embodied perspectives. 2. To explore these reimaginings in the context of service and support infrastructure in our current healthcare systems, and design future health interventions to meet these alternative experiences. 3. To map areas of shared interest so as to inform the development of a localised and inclusive sociology of menopause. The second workshop will add one additional aim: 4. To generate a practice framework that can guide arts-based research with gender and sexuality diverse people experiencing menopause. In the first roundtable workshop, invited speakers will offer provocations from different perspectives across health sociology, critical gender and sexuality studies, gynaecological research and other areas of ‘women’s’ health, creative arts practice and socially engaged design, and LGBTQ+ health policy, health promotion and advocacy. These collective reimaginings will then be used in the second roundtable workshop to invite considerations of how to think differently about service and support responses, and to move towards a socially-engaged design of health interventions to meet the needs of a more diversely imagined community of people experiencing menopause. Sociological participants will also be invited to offer relevant provocations to include in this dialogue through an open EOI. We will propose that contributions seek to expand on or respond to the following propositions: • Gender is something we all perform and affirm through our everyday activities, including cis people. • Gender is experienced as dynamic by all people, not just those whose gender differs from that assigned at birth. • Scripting to make sense of the rich variety of menopause experiences is a form of self-care, aligned with broader notion of gender affirmation, such as among gender diverse people. • Cultural scripts on menopause can be radically reimagined through alternative cultural and social representations. • Healthcare responses to an expansive reimagining of menopause are enhanced by sociological contributions that extend knowledge of, and intervene in, this largely cisgenderist and heterosexist domain of practice. Together, these two roundtables will provide a long overdue opportunity to advance interdisciplinary and intersectoral dialogue on an issue of growing interest.

Alone in a crisis: Reflections on recent personal, financial, and health shifts

2nd November 2022
Virtual 1-day workshop
Organiser: Lara McKenzie

‘Alone in a crisis’ is a full-day, virtual workshop presenting researcher findings and practitioner experiences on single and solo living people’s personal, financial, and heath-related experiences of recent crises, government pandemic measures and lockdowns, and the implications of any resulting shifts. It will bring together postgraduate, early career researcher, and senior academic sociologists, anthropologists, and social scientists, as well as practitioners and policy experts from across the world. Workshop participants will discuss the realities, consequences, and future needs of people living alone in times of crisis.

The workshop will explore being ‘alone’ from a number of different perspectives. Participants might examine the short and long-term implications of lockdowns and other government health measures for people’s love lives, for instance, asking how dating, sex, singledom, and relationships have been reorganised (or not) across different national contexts. For example, in Australia, single people were largely restricted from forming in-person sexual and romantic relationships during lockdowns, while in Denmark citizens were encouraged to choose a ‘seksbuddy’ to visit. The workshop will also ask how people’s personal finances have been impacted, in light of widespread job losses, the rising cost of living, and financial downturns across the world. Also of interest is the impact of the pandemic on health, ageing, and care. Most of those living alone are older people, yet discussion of this group has generally centred on aged care facilities, which were hard hit by COVID-19. The lives of solo-living older people, and those who experienced the deaths of their partners, have received less attention.

The workshop will thus take a broad approach to being ‘alone’ in a crisis, aiming to draw together sociologists and other social scientists whose work does not normally coalesce. These scholars might work in a range of areas, researching relationships, singledom, finances, work, health, and ageing. National and international practitioners and policymakers will also be invited. Following the workshop in November, academic participants will be invited to contribute to a journal special issue.

Please email paper proposals to lara.mckenzie@uwa.edu.au by 5pm AEST on Friday 7 October 2022, including the following information:

• Paper title
• Name, email, and affiliation (if any)
• Paper abstract (250 words max)
• Are you are a postgraduate or early career researcher? Yes/No

For any questions please email Lara McKenzie at lara.mckenzie@uwa.edu.au.

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Sydney Urban Food Systems Innovations - What works and why?
February-June 2022 TBD
Organiser: Sarina Kilham

This will be an interdisciplinary interactive participant centred workshop that will include contributions from government and practitioners outside of academia. The workshop will map emerging knowledge of urban food systems innovations, impact pathways and strategies to guide urban food system innovations. As an interactive participant-centred workshop aimed at data co-creation with participant, each participant will have an opportunity to unpack their own knowledge on urban food systems innovations as well as discuss and brainstorm with other participants through structured group work activities. The workshop will generate knowledge on understanding ‘what works’ and ‘why’ in urban food systems innovations in an Australian context; strengthen cross-sectorial urban food networking and inform urban LGA food policy development. As this workshop is linked to a broader social research project that is a collaboration between local government and a university, it is anticipated that the workshop will feed into both practitioner and academic outcomes. Notably, the workshop data co-creation activities are anticipated to become the guide for further key stakeholders interviews, online crowd-sourced dialogue and focus groups.