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 a 3rd International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Spatial Methods for Urban Sustainability (“SMUS Conference”), which will simultaneously be the “3rd RC33 Regional Conference Asia: India”, and take place on site at the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee (IIT Roorkee, India) from Monday, February 20th, to Sunday, February 26th, 2023. Also, this year IIT Roorkee is celebrating 175 years (1847-2022) of imparting technical education and contribution in the development of the society.
The six-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 conference programme will include keynotes, sessions and advanced methodological training courses. All papers have to address a methodological problem. Conference sessions aim to address a methodological problem through sessions on general issues of social science methodology and epistemology as well as on qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods approaches, focussing on the following themes:
- Spatial methods
- Architectural research methods
- Mobile, arts- and/or design-based methods
- Interdisciplinary and/or transdisciplinary, participatory and/or collaborative research methods
- Applied research methods for urban design, urban planning, traffic planning and environmental planning
- Decolonizing social science methodology and overcoming methodological nationalism
- Methods from, by and/or for the Global South
- Cross-cultural methods, transnational research and issues of comparability
- Quantitative methods
- Qualitative methods
- Mixed methods
- Visual research methods
- Strategies of data collection, storage and access
- Digital methods, big data and digital humanities
- Process-oriented, longitudinal and historical methods
- Evaluation methods and methods of scientific validation
- Research ethics
- 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)
Please find more information on the above institutions on the following websites:
- Global Center of Spatial Methods for Urban Sustainability (GCSMUS): https://gcsmus.org/
- ISA RC33: http://rc33.org/
- ESA RN21: www.europeansociology.org/research-networks/rn21-quantitative-methods
- IIT Roorkee: https://www.iitr.ac.in/
Each subject is more or less directly addressed by the five Actions that underpin the Global Spatial Methods for Urban Sustainability (GCSMUS). In order to implement these Actions at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT Roorkee), this University and Technische Universität Berlin have signed a five-year cooperation agreement.
The GCSMUS lead partner institution at IIT Roorkee is the Department of Architecture and Planning with the help of the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences for organizing the conference.
Team
The organization of the SMUS Conference India 2023 is a joint initiative of professors, students and members of the administration staff of both Department of Architecture and Planning and the Department of Humanity and Social Sciences of the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee. Moreover, it is enriched by the collaboration of the GCSMUS Berlin team.
Steering Committee:
Prof. Dr. Gaurav Raheja (Convener, GCSMUS Lead Partner and Action Speaker; Conference Convener; Professor at the Department of Architecture and Planning, IIT Roorkee) gaurav.raheja@ar.iitr.ac.in
Prof. Dr. Manish Kumar Asthana (Co-Convener, Professor at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Roorkee) m.asthana@hs.iitr.ac.in
Prof. Dr. Shubhajit Sadhukhan (Co-Convener, Professor at the Department of Architecture and Planning, IIT Roorkee) shubhajit@ar.iitr.ac.in
Prof. Dr. Anindya Jayanta Mishra (Head of Department and Professor at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Roorkee) anindya.mishra@hs.iitr.ac.in
Prof. Dr. Nina Baur (SMUS Director & RC33 Past President; Technische Universität Berlin, Germany) nina.baur@tu-berlin.de
SMUS India Conference Administrator:
Varnita Singh – Project Associate (varnita.smus2023@gmail.com)
Aishwarya Bali – Project Associate (aishwarya.smus2023@gmail.com)
SMUS India Conference Team:
Aishwarya Isha – Phd student Assistant (a_isha@ar.iitr.ac.in)
Yamuna V M– Phd student Assistant (yamuna_m@ar.iitr.ac.in)
Ankita Verma – PhD student Assistant (ankita_v@hs.iitr.ac.in)
Sharmili Mitra – PhD student Assistant (s_mitra@hs.iitr.ac.in)
Tripureshwari Paul – PhD student Assistant (t_paul@hs.iitr.ac.in)
Kaneez Fatima – PhD student Assistant (kaneez_f@hs.iitr.ac.in)
Utkarsha Vinod Kulkarni – Student Assistant (utkarsha_k@design.iitr.ac.in)