Dear Colleagues,
we are happy to announce that the “Global Center of Spatial Methods for Urban Sustainability” (GCSMUS) 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 “1st International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Spatial Methods for Urban Sustainability” (“SMUS Conference”) which will at the same time be the “1st RC33 Regional Conference – Africa: Botswana” from Monday 15.03 – Sunday 21.03.2021, hosted by the University of Botswana in Gaborone, Botswana. The main conference days will be from Thursday 18.03. – Saturday 20.03.2021. There will be travel grants GCSMUS members and African scholars can apply for.
The seven-days conference aims at promoting a global dialogue on methods and should attract methodologists from all over the world and all social and spatial sciences (e.g. area studies, architecture, communication studies, educational sciences, geography, historical sciences, humanities, landscape planning, philosophy, psychology, sociology, urban design, urban planning, traffic planning and environmental planning). Additionally, the conference programme will include advanced methodological training courses, Ph.D. workshops and a social programme. Thus, the conference will enable scholars to get in contact with methodologists from various disciplines all over the world and to deepen discussions with researchers from various methodological angles.
With this mission, we invite scholars of all social and spatial sciences and other scholars who are interested into 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:
‒ spatial methods and analysis
‒ cross-cultural methods and issues of comparability
‒ decolonizing social science methodology
‒ methods of and for the Global South
‒ methodological issues relevant for specific world regions (e.g. Africa, America, Asia, Europe)
‒ monitoring and evaluation methods and analysis
‒ applied research methods on urban design, urban planning, traffic planning and environmental planning
‒ arts- and design-based methods
‒ participatory and action research methods
‒ interdisciplinary and collaborative research methods
‒ big data, digital methods and cross-disciplinary research
‒ methods for values research, global wellbeing and sustainability
‒ methods for analysis of space and social inequality (e.g. space and class, gendered spaces, space and age, space and race)
If you are interested in organizing a session, please submit an abstract containing the following information to (botswana2021@mes.tu-berlin.de) by 31.03.2020:
‒ Session Title
‒ Session Organizers (Name, Email-Address, Institutional Affiliation)
‒ Session Abstract (containing a short description of the session and the type of papers you want to be submitted to the session).
If you do not receive an acknowledgement of submission within three working days, please resend your submission. The conference organizers will inform you, if your session has been accepted, by 13.04.2020. Please note that all sessions apply to the rules of session organization named 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):
www.mes.tu-berlin.de/spatialmethods
‒ ISA RC33: http://rc33.org/
‒ ESA RN21: www.europeansociology.org/research-networks/rn21-quantitative-methods
‒ University of Botswana in Gaborone: www.ub.bw
If you are interested in getting further information on the conference (such as Calls for Abstracts) and other GCSMUS activities, please subscribe to the GCSMUS newsletter by registering via the following website:
https://lists.tu-berlin.de/mailman/listinfo/mes-smusnews
Please also kindly forward this information to anybody to whom it might be of interest.
Best wishes,
Nina Baur Gabriel Faimau
GCSMUS Speaker and RC33 Past President GCSMUS Botswana Lead Partner
Technische Universität Berlin University of Botswana
Germany Botswana