ISA 2024 Virtual Conference: Building Connections to Confront Complex Challenges

The challenges of our time are complex and often seem intractable. Conflict management, post-conflict reconstruction, climate crisis, humanitarian crises, disaster relief, and so on are unlikely to be solved by the insights provided by a single discipline or approach. Sustainable and equitable responses require multidimensional and interdisciplinary engagement and can also involve methodological innovation and transformation. Building connections across disciplines and specializations, as well as across geographic space, is likely to have a profound impact on the generation of ideas and knowledge. This virtual conference is uniquely suitable for building connections across disciplinary communities and across geographic space. We, therefore, invite colleagues to explore the benefits of interdisciplinary approaches to a range of complex challenges and to collaborate across disciplines and across geographic space on articulating innovative and transformative responses. 
 
Possible themes and topics to explore include:

• How do different disciplines view the same political event, process, or phenomenon? How do these different visions inform understanding and innovation?
• How do scholars from different geographic locations view the same political event, process, or phenomenon? How do their different perceptions and understanding lead to innovative and actionable ideas?
• What are the benefits of an interdisciplinary approach to methodology or research design?
• What are the benefits of dialogue and exchange between geographically separate scholarly communities?
• How might the combined insights from several disciplines and/or scholars from different geographic regions transform knowledge production regarding any given problem?
• How do we understand and encounter disciplinary boundaries?
• What are the politics of inclusion and exclusion within disciplines?
• How are disciplines (re)produced?

Program Chairs: Christina Fattore (West Virginia University) and Maryam Khalid (Macquarie University)    

Deadline for proposals: Friday, 1 March 2024