Join us for our 96th Annual Meeting:

March 5-8, 2026

WASHINGTON, DC

Washington Marriott at Metro Center

Transformation & Repair: Worldmaking in Contexts

of Struggle and Constraint

Worldmaking is a capacious concept. Far from imagining Empire, sociological treatments of worldmaking are expansive, anchoring the building of new systems, new scaffolds of belonging, and new ways of being in everyday work and collective practices. Through worldmaking processes, new interpretations can gain footing that make alternate conditions of existence possible. It is a collective activity rooted in place and space, that enriches our collective life, wards against human vulnerability and despair, disrupts the flow of power, and pushes back against ‘big’ structures. The 96th annual Eastern Sociological Society meetings, to be held in Washington DC, a city that belongs to the people, will consider worldmaking as it emerges in contexts of struggle and constraint, as a complex of everyday doings that have the capacity to stem the tides of subjugation and anti-democratic mobilizations, upend harmful systems, challenge the cultural logics of domination, and make possible transformation and repair.

 

Washington Marriott at Metro Center, Washington D.C.

March 5-8, 2026

https://www.essnet.org/

​Abstract submission deadline: October 15, 2025

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ESS 2026: Mini-Conferences

Mini-Conference: Military Sociology and Worldmaking

Organizers: Morten Ender; Ryan Kelty Contact: morten.ender@westpoint.edu; ryan.kelty@afacademy.af.edu

Description: This mini conference explores how individuals and communities connected to the military engage in transformative practices of worldmaking that reinforce institutional norms, foster belonging, and create possibilities for repair amid conflict and structures of constraint.

 

Mini-Conference: Sociology of Reproduction

Organizers: Emily Mann; Alyssa Newman; Patrice Wright; Carlo Sariego; Lauren Danielowski and Dunahay Pereyra Contact: emily.mann@sc.edu; alyssa.newman@georgetown.edu; Patrice.wright@howard.edu; carlo.sariego@yale.edu; dunahay.pereyra@uconn.edu; lauren.danielowski@uconn.edu

Description: Cross-disciplinary research on reproductive issues

 

Mini-Conference: Transforming and Repairing Health Professions Education Organizers: Emily Ekl; Hana Gebremariam; Andrea Kelley; Lauren Olsen; Nicole Anne Perez Contact: ekl.1@osu.edu; hana.gebremariam@temple.edu; adkelley@msu.edu; lauren.olsen@temple.edu; nperez57@uic.edu

Description: This mini-conference covers topics related to health professions education, including traditionally-presented research, pedagogy presentations, and practice discussions.

 

Mini-Conference: Decolonial Sociology in Times of Resistance

Organizers: Yasemin Bavbek; Swati Birla; Veda Hyunjin Kim; Heidi Nicholls; Jose Itzigsohn Contact: nybavbek@fas.harvard.edu; birlas@newpaltz.edu; vhkim@owu.edu; hnicholls1@binghamton.edu; jose_itzigsohn@brown.edu Description: Decolonial Sociology in Times of Resistance

 

Mini-Conference: Teaching Sociology

Organizers: Erin K. Anderson; Lauren Danielowski; Dunahay Pereyra; Asmita Aasaavari Contact: eanderson3@washcoll.edu; lauren.danielowski@uconn.edu; dunahay.pereyra@uconn.edu; asmita.aasaavari@uconn.edu

Description: This mini-conference will feature presentations related to innovative pedagogical strategies in the teaching of sociology, reflexive considerations on instruction, and address teaching challenges and successes.

 

Mini-Conference: Environmental Sociology: Transformation and Repair in Constraining Environments

Organizers: Amanda McMillan; Xiaorui Huang; Lacee Satcher; Danielle Falzon

Contact: amanda.mcmillanlequieu@drexel.edu; xiaorui.huang@drexel.edu; lacee.satcher@bc.edu; danielle.falzon@rutgers.edu

Description: This mini-conference will explore key issues in 21st-century environmental sociology—including but not limited to environmental justice, climate change, governance, and activism—in the context of ongoing crises and transformative responses.

 

Mini-Conference: Transnational Asian/America

Organizers: Xuemei Cao; Minjung Noh; Shirley Lung

Contact: xcao@bentley.edu; min223@lehigh.edu; shirley.lung@du.edu

Description: Transnational Asian/America showcases scholarship that uses transnational perspectives to shed light on little-examined areas of Asian American social life, especially domains that are primarily understood through American-centric lenses.

 

Mini-Conference: Communities in Contention

Organizer: Jennifer L. Garfield-Abrams Contact: jennifer.garfield-abrams@suffolk.edu

Description: Submissions for this mini-conference should explore how political and cultural divides take shape—and might be bridged—within the communities we inhabit and the worlds we build.

 

Mini-Conference: The Critical Sociology of Death

Organizers: Ara Francis; Jyoti Puri Contact: afrancis@holycross.edu; puri@bu.edu

Description: This mini conference seeks to reimagine the sociology of death, dying, and bereavement by foregrounding critical perspectives and empirical contexts that are ordinarily unaccounted for in contemporary death studies.

 

Mini-Conference: Black Placemaking and Worldmaking: Space, Power, and Possibility

Organizers: Lacee Satcher; Demetrius Miles Murphy

Contact: lacee.satcher@bc.edu; Demetrius.Murphy@bc.edu

Description: This mini-conference explores how Black communities across rural, urban, and diasporic spaces actively create, contest, and reimagine place in ways that reflect both the weight of structural constraints and the generative possibilities of belonging, resistance, memory, and care.

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Mini-Conference: Bringing the People Back In

Organizers: Daniel Laurison, James Jones, Wendy Li

Contact: dlauris1@swarthmore.edu; james.r.jones@rutgers.edu; wli167@jh.edu

Description: This mini-conference is aimed at bringing together sociologists, political scientists, and practitioners who study U.S. politics with attention to race, class, inequality, and the importance of social and cultural forces.