Calls/Announcements

Deadline: 13.03.2022

2nd International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Spatial Methods for
Urban Sustainability (SMUS Conference) &
1st RC33 Regional Conference Latin America: Brazil, 08‒10.09.2022,
Online-Conference hosted by the University of São Paulo (Brazil)

Dear Colleagues,

we are happy to announce that the Global Center of Spatial Methods for Urban Sustainability (GCSMUS or SMUS) together with the Research Committee on “Logic and Methodology in Sociology” (RC33) of the International Sociology Association (ISA) and the Research Network “Quantitative Methods” (RN21) of the European Sociology Association (ESA) will organize the 2nd International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Spatial Methods for Urban Sustainability (“SMUS Conference”), which will simultaneously be the “1st RC33 Regional Conference Latin America: Brazil”, and take place online at the University of São Paulo (Brazil) from Thursday, September 8th, to Saturday September 10th, 2022.

The three-day conference aims at continuing a global dialogue on methods and should attract methodologists from all over the world and all social and spatial sciences (e. g. anthropology, area studies, architecture, communication studies, computational sciences, digital humanities, educational sciences, geography, historical sciences, humanities, landscape planning, philosophy, psychology, sociology, urban design, urban planning, traffic planning and environmental planning). The online conference programme will include keynotes, sessions and advanced methodological training courses.

With this intention, we invite scholars of all social and spatial sciences and other scholars who are interested in methodological discussions to suggest a session topic. Conference sessions should mainly address a methodological problem. All sessions on general issues of social science methodology and epistemology as well as on qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods approaches are equally welcome. In addition, we especially invite scholars to suggest session topics on one of the following issues:

1.   Spatial methods
2.  Process-oriented, longitudinal and historical methods
3.  Decolonizing social science methodology
4.  Methods from, by and/or for the Global South
5.  Overcoming methodological nationalism
6.  Cross-cultural methods, transnational research and issues of comparability
7.  Quantitative methods
8.  Qualitative methods
9.  Mixed methods
10.  Strategies of data collection, storage and access
11.  Digital methods, big data and digital humanities
12.  Mobile, arts- and/or design-based methods
13.  Interdisciplinary and/or transdisciplinary, participatory and/or collaborative research methods
14.  Applied research methods for urban design, urban planning, traffic planning and environmental planning
15.  Evaluation methods and methods of scientific validation
16.  Research ethics
17.  Methodological issues relevant for specific research topics (for example, urban research, sustainability research, social housing, crime and public safety, or spatial inequalities concerning gender, race and/or ethnicity)

If you are interested in organizing a session, please submit an English-language proposal containing the following information to SMUS Brazil 2022 via this form by 13.03.2022:

• Session Title
• Session Organizer(s) (= name(s), email address(es), institutional affiliation(s))
• 500-Word Abstract (= short description of the proposed session and the kind of expected papers)

If you do not receive an acknowledgement of submission within three working days, please resend your submission.The conference organizers will inform you by 23.03.2022 if your session has been accepted.
Please note that all sessions must adhere to the rules of session organization as in the RC33 statutes and GCSMUS Objectives (see below).

Please find more information on the above institutions on the following websites:

• Global Center of Spatial Methods for Urban Sustainability (GCSMUS)
• Subscription to the GCSMUS Newsletter
• ISA RC33
• ESA RN21
• University of São Paulo

Please also kindly forward this call to anybody to whom it might be of interest.
Best wishes,

Rules for Session Organization
(According to GCSMUS Objectives and RC 33 Statutes)

1. There will be no conference fees.

2. The conference language is English, although some of the activities are going to be simultaneously translated into Portuguese. All papers therefore need to be presented in English.

3. All sessions have to be international: Each session should have speakers from at least two countries (exceptions will need good reasons).

4. Each paper must contain a methodological problem (any area, qualitative or quantitative).

5. There will be several calls for abstracts via the GCSMUS, RC33 and RN21 Newsletters. To begin with, session organizers can prepare a call for abstracts on their own initiative, then at a different time, there will be a common call for abstracts, and session organizers can ask anybody to submit a paper.

6. GCSMUS, RC33 and RN21 members may distribute these calls via other channels. GCSMUS members and session organizers are expected to actively advertise their session in their respective scientific communities.

7. Speakers can only have one talk per session. This also applies for joint papers. It will not be possible for A and B to present at the same time one paper as B and A during the same session. This would just extend the time allocated to these speakers.

8. Session organizers may present a paper in their own session.

9. Sessions will have a length of 90 minutes with a maximum of 4 papers or a length of 120minutes with a maximum of 6 papers. Session organizers can invite as many speakers as they like. The number of sessions depends on the number of papers submitted to each session: for example, if 12 good papers are submitted to a session, there will be two sessions with a length of 90 minutes each with 6 papers in each session.

10. Papers may only be rejected for the conference if they do not present a methodological problem (as stated above), are not in English or are somehow considered by session organizers as not being appropriate or relevant for the conference. Session organizers may ask authors to revise and resubmit their paper so that it fits these requirements. If session organizers do not wish to consider a paper submitted to their session, they should inform the author and forward the paper to the local organizing team who will find a session where the paper fits for presentation.

11. Papers directly addressed to the conference organising committee, suggesting a session. The conference organizers will check the formal rules and then offer the paper to the session organizer of the most appropriate session. The session organizers will have to decide on whether or not the paper can be included in their session(s). If the session organizers think that the paper does not fit into their session(s), the papers has to be sent back to the confer- ence organizing committee as soon as possible so that the committee can offer the papers to another session organizer.