By Henrietta O'Connor, BSA Membership Services Director

You’ve been busy over the summer, and so have we! We are pleased to be able to announce further details of the 2019 Annual Conference.

The conference will take place in the beautiful city of Glasgow from 24-26 April 2019 at Glasgow Caledonian University.   The conference theme is ‘Challenging Social Hierarchies and Inequalities’ and we are delighted to announce our three plenary speakers:

• Nonna Mayer, Sciences Po, France
• Imogen Tyler, Lancaster University, UK
• Satnam Virdee, University of Glasgow, UK

The conference theme is broad and we are hoping that many of you will find synergies with your own research.  The focus on social hierarchies and inequalities speaks to a range of thematic questions, including, but not restricted to:  Which are the hierarchies and inequalities that matter most in contemporary social divisions? How do we understand the relationship between different sources of hierarchy and inequality? What are the methodological tools we need to both capture them and to support challenges to them? Is sociological research doing enough to work with other associated disciplines and non-academic knowledge and expertise to play a meaningful role in public debate and social practice to challenge the important social problems created by inequality?

The streams are varied to reflect our desire to attract a wide range of papers relating to the conference theme.

Many of you have contacted us to say how much you enjoyed this year’s conference and we have created a video link with some of the 2018 highlights (coming soon). These clips will give you an idea of what to expect if you haven’t been before.  If you have been before, but need reminding of how fantastic the conference is, take a look at Kimberlé Crenshaw’s outstanding plenary.

We know Twitter activity around the conference has become more prominent in recent years and (recognising there is sometimes confusion over the hashtag – Building Society Association/British Soap Awards anyone?…) we have adopted the hashtag: #britsoc19

The Annual Conference is a great opportunity to meet up with colleagues and to meet new people. We know that many productive collaborations and links have been made at the BSA conference over the years and we hope that 2019 will be no exception.  Please join us if you can for what already promises to be an exciting three days of ‘live sociology’. 

Visit the conference website for further details - abstract submissions are open!

The deadline for abstract submissions is Friday, 12 October but we will remind you again and provide further conference details in the next issue of our newsletter.