On Friday December 4 the Department of Sociology, Maynooth University will host an event to celebrate the life of the late Professor Liam Ryan. Liam was a well known and much loved figure on campus for several decades and he is widely missed by his friends and former colleagues in Maynooth and elsewhere. We hope you will join us to celebrate this inimitable man and to share stories about his life as an academic, priest, hurler and raconteur.

For further details please see the notice attached. If you wish to attend the event we would appreciate if you would email us at sociology.department@nuim.ie no later than Friday November 27.

The  3rd International Irish Narrative Inquiry Conference hosted at the National University of Ireland, Galway 10-11 March 2016,  co-organised and supported by Institute of Technology, Sligo,  National University of Ireland Galway and Maynooth University. This unique gathering of scholars, practitioners, artists and creative inquirers pays attention to the use of narrative inquiry in research and practice. 

Our focus this year is to ask how do we DO narrative inquiry in the arts, humanities and social sciences? When we do narrative inquiry we are engaged in a host of  complex and interconnected activities.  As well as conducting forms of inquiry that have narratives of lived reality and experience  as their object of study, we also write narratives, and we collate and curate the ‘stuff’ of narrative - maps, diaries, letters, objects, recordings, films, images.  When we DOnarrative inquiry, we DO all of these things.  But we also do narrative inquiry in particular places with particular people, at particular times of a person’s life,  with a focus on events of some significance. In this context, what does it mean ‘to do’ narrative inquiry? This is the question that will guide our explorations, discussions, reflections and exchanges and we warmly welcome you to join us in  the conversation. 

Call for Papers

In this conference we seek to explore the doing of narrative inquiry in its many forms, and to take seriously the time, place and significance  of its doing.  The conference is organised around a number of strands:

·        Narrating place - where is narrative inquiry conducted and does it matter; how do we narrate spaces and places; what is the role of visual texts (maps, images) in narrating space, place and relationship?
·        Narrating the self - how does the person, individual and self feature in the narratives we write; how do we conduct narrative inquiries into self; how is self composed/constructed in the unfolding of the narrative? What is the relationship between narrative inquiry and auto-ethnography? What does a focus on narrative as an emancipatory, transformatory or therapuetic force bring to our work?
·        Narrating visually and digitally - how do we do visual narrative?  How do we construct digital stories; does the digital offer new capabilities for narrating lived reality?
·        Narrating the ‘Nation’ – as we celebrate the centenary of the 1916 Rising in Ireland this strand considers how  the stories of nations are commemorated; what narratives are prioritised and by extension omitted, and to  what extent do these narratives shape the formulation of contemporary and future understandings of Irish identity?​

We invite papers and posters on these themes.  We also welcome papers that pay attention to the theoretical, methodological and creative challenges faced by narrative inquiry researchers. We ask that you consider creative ways of presenting that do not necessarily rely upon the usual conference presentation. We would like to encourage postgraduate students to participate.  If you are in the final stages of your PhD or have recently completed a Doctorate inspired by narrative inquiry, we would like you to consider submitting a paper. Those in the earlier stages of narrative doctoral work and or who have completed  a Masters programme might consider presenting work-in-progress in the form of a poster.

* In 2016 Ireland is commemorating its birth as a Republic through a range of events related to the 1916 Rising in Dublin and its consequences.

Abstract Guidelines
Please submit a 500 word abstract as a pdf file with references via the website by the 18th of December 2015. Please indicate whether the abstract is for a paper or poster presentation. 
The Conference Programme will be available by Februray 1st 2016. Contact the conference organisers for any queries or questions about the conference and we look forward to welcoming you to the City of Lakes, Rivers, Canals and the Atlantic Ocean in the West of Ireland.

Submit your Abstract here 

INTERNATIONAL PANEL ON SOCIAL PROGRESS - Call for Input from Sociologists in Ireland
 
The interactions of humans as social beings are being impacted profoundly in this middle part of the twenty first century through a number of interconnected forces: the weakening of the traditional nation state and the rise of transnational issues; powerful forces of technical change; profound and unequal transformations in health and education outcomes, rising inequalities of wealth and income within countries, contestations between the religious and the secular; post- cold war conflicts and insecurities within and between nations; etc. Policy makers and actors from civil society, particularly those concerned about social justice, need to understand how the impact of their actions are conditioned by these trends and how they in turn shape and are shaped by the social and group interactions of human beings.

Concepts and tools for a better society are in great demand. The purpose of the International Panel on Social Progress (IPSP) is to harness the competence of academics of all relevant disciplines, perspectives, and regions of the world to assess and synthesize the state-of-the-art knowledge on the principles, possibilities, and methods for improving the main institutions of the modern societies. The Panel will discuss desirable reforms and structural changes, and examine their feasibility. Consensual conclusions and persisting controversies will be laid out by an interdisciplinary team of social scientists each of whom is willing and able to engage across disciplines to inform scholars, policy makers and social actors on what the best social science can, and cannot, say.

The Panel will produce a Report in three years (autumn 2014 – autumn 2017) and the drafting process will include collecting comments from a global network of scholars, civil society, activists, governments, and international organizations. The IPSP Report will not cover all social issues and all social policies, but will focus on the most important issues involving substantial changes and bearing on the long run perspective. It will deliver a Synthesis report addressed to all social actors, movements, organizations, politicians and decision-makers, in order to provide them with the best expertise on questions that bear on social change. The overall IPSP initiative benefits from the support of internationally recognized figures led by Prof. Amartya Sen and is placed under the guidance of a high-level international Steering Committee.
 
National contact points can offer further information to the press, academics and social movements. They will also circulate drafts for comments to national social science networks and will feed back these debates to the international panel.

IRELAND CONTACT POINT: Professor Ronaldo Munck, Head of Civic Engagement at Dublin City University (Ronnie.munck@dcu.ie)
WEBSITE: http://www.ip-socialprogress.org/

Sociological Association of Ireland

June 12th & 13th, 2015
Trinity College Dublin

Call for Papers

The Annual Conference of the SAI will be held on the 12th and 13th of June.  The theme is open, as usual, for there is no shortage of topics during a period of such intense change & possibility, nor such an urgent need for sociological analysis and understanding: the end of austerity and purported 'recovery' – a return to 'business as usual'? 
A dramatic reconfiguration of the political landscape has taken place in Ireland and internationally; a collapsing centre and polarisation of extremes. Hot and (new) Cold wars, an over-heating planet, and new waves of migration and refugee flows; sharp polarisations  of wealth, social inequality and precarity and their ramifications in revenue, health, housing, and education; decomposition and reconfiguration of core social institutions; new family forms, same sex marriage; new moralities, subjectivities, identities, resistances. We invite you to submit a paper and join in the discussion about this changing social, political and economic landscape!    

For full details of conferences and how to apply - download PDF file below.

The SAI is proud to announce our new look website has gone live!