Conference Call for Papers
- From crisis management and historical approaches to eventfulness, to crisis critique and contemporary debates on polycrisis, the study of crisis has emerged as a vibrant frontier of scholarship. Attention to concrete episodes of disruption and emergency is increasingly accompanied by reflection on the conceptual categories through which such situations are recognized, interpreted, and governed. Across disciplines, crisis itself, alongside related concepts such as risk, responsibility, uncertainty, and resilience, is becoming a shared object of inquiry.
- This conference, to be held at the University of Virginia on September 13, 2027, seeks to advance that conversation. We begin from the observation that modern social thought has repeatedly been organized around diagnoses of crisis: crises of capitalism, religion, national identity, empire, democracy, and social order. Crisis is not only an event to be managed or explained but also a form of critique: a way of interpreting uncertainty, assigning responsibility, mobilizing action, and imagining futures.
- We invite contributions that explore crisis as empirical phenomenon, analytical concept, cultural category and political claim. We are particularly interested in scholarship that examines crisis within specific domains while contributing to broader theoretical understanding; comparative research across domains, locales, and historical periods; studies of how crises are constructed, articulated, governed, and managed; investigations into the production and exercise of crisis expertise; and work that reflects on the concepts, methods, and institutions through which crises are identified and understood. Representative questions may include: What counts as a crisis, and what sense of the ordinary does this designation sustain? What forms of crisis remain marginalized, contested, or invisible? How do anticipatory practices, expert knowledge, and crisis expertise shape social life before crises occur? What are the possibilities and limits of intervention once a crisis unfolds? How do urgency, uncertainty, and threat shape decision-making and governance during crises? And how do crises end, leaving behind new institutions, narratives, and forms of social order?
- Submission: Please submit an abstract of 1000 words through this google form describing the paper’s central question, theoretical or conceptual framework, empirical materials, and contribution to Crisis Studies.
- Deadline: Abstracts are due December 15, 2026. Applicants will be notified of decisions by January 15, 2027. Full papers are due August 15, 2027.
- Conference and Edited Volume: The conference will be held at the University of Virginia on September 17, 2027. Participants will be expected to submit and present a full paper and receive feedback from designated discussants. Participants are also strongly encouraged to contribute their revised papers to a planned edited volume that aims to help define and advance the emerging field of social science research on crisis.
- Travel and Accommodation: CSI will cover round-trip transportation up to $1000 to Charlottesville, two nights of hotel accommodation, and meals during the conference for invited participants.