 | Dear ~~first_name~~,
Welcome to this week's TASA update.
We are delighted to celebrate a number of member achievements in this edition, including grant successes, a first journal publication, and recognition of outstanding Master’s students at Macquarie University. We also extend a warm welcome to new members joining TASA.
An important, friendly, reminder that abstract submissions for TASA 2026 close on 24 April. We encourage you to get your submissions in and look forward to another exciting program.
This edition also features an upcoming TASA Thursdays event with Raewyn Connell, who will discuss their new book Trans Lives, as well as a new masterclass in the Postgraduate Sociology of What? series. Applications are now open for the 2026 Career Development Grant, alongside a range of member publications, calls for submissions for upcoming special issues of the Journal of Sociology and Health Sociology Review, thematic groups' news and events, and new job and PhD scholarship opportunities.
Finally, as we head into the Easter long weekend, we wish all members a safe and restful break.
Thank you, as always, for being part of TASA's community.
Warm regards,
TASA Team
| We extend our warm congratulations to fellow members Alex Ridgway and Joe van Buuren who were recently awarded a Victorian Law Foundation everyday legal grant for their project, Visualising Public Legal Information: Using Graphic Narratives to Address Community Legal Information Need. The project is a partnership between Alex and Joe (RMIT) and and ARC Justice (a community legal centre based in Bendigo and Shepparton). You can find out more about the project here.
We also extend our warm congratulations to fellow member Maddison Sideris on their first journal article publication: Sideris, M. (2026). The stickiness of singlehood: Single women and the accumulation of affect. The Sociological Review, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/00380261261434313
We further extend our warm congratulations to Erica Hatfield & Tsend-Ayush Ganbaatar who got equal first marks in Macquarie’s Master of Research overall mark (90% thesis plus 10% coursework) in 2025. Both Erica and Tsend-Ayush will be extended a complimentary membership as part of our Honours/Masters Student Sociology Award. A big thank you to fellow member Justine Lloyd for nominating the students.
| A warm welcome to our new members, Steph Garratt (Monash University) and Ruiyao Luo (Edith Cowan University). We are pleased to have them join the community and look forward to their involvement in upcoming activities.
| TASA 2026 promises to be an inspiring event bringing together the sociological community to explore the theme: Revolution and Resistance. The theme asks: What can sociology offer to understandings of resistance and revolution? How can we read resistance and revolution expansively, productively and generatively in pursuit of a better world?
General Abstract Submission Deadline: 24 April
These include thematic group presentations, book launches, photography exhibitions and workshop proposals.
More details about the conference, including the submission links, are available on our TASA 2026 web pages here..
Note, the conference bursary applications are now open as well, but you need to submit an abstract before applying for a bursary.
| | TASA THURSDAYS -TRANS LIVES | 23rd APRIL 2026 | 12:30PM AEST
Join us for a TASA Thursday session on 23 April at 12:30pm AEST with renowned sociologist, and fellow member, Raewyn Connell, discussing her new book Trans Lives. This timely talk explores the social, political, and global contexts shaping trans experiences today. Drawing on international case studies, Raewyn examines gender, transition, and the structures that shape trans lives, while addressing the rise of anti-trans movements and the importance of solidarity and social justice.
| | | | POSTGRADUATE MASTERCLASS | 28 APRIL 2026 | 10:30AM | ONLINE
Join us for an interactive online masterclass as part of our TASA Postgraduates 2026 Sociology of What? series. Led by fellow members Lucy Nicholas and Rosie Clare Shorter, this session explores the sociology of gender and sexualities through collaborative, hands-on learning.
Work in small groups to apply theory to your own research and build confidence in using sociological concepts.
Places are limited—apply with a short research outline to participate by Clicking Here | | | Raewyn Connell Prize
If relevant, we encourage you to consider nominating an eligible first book and to reach out to colleagues or others in your networks who may have published their first book in 2024 or 2025. In case you're not aware, publishers usually cover the cost of books for prize entries. If your publisher wants to charge you for the books, please get in touch with Sally in TASA Admin.
Submissions close 30 April.
For the full details, please visit the prize webpage here.
Nominations are now open for the The Most Distinguished Peer-Reviewed Article Published by an Early Career Researcher. This year, the panel are accepting papers published in the previous three years (i.e. 2023, 2024 or 2025). The nomination process requires the person submitting the nomination (or the nominee, if self-nominating) to prepare a written statement of between 150-200 words addressed to the selection panel. This statement will be considered when assessing the article against the criteria below.
The style and format of the statement is open - we encourage innovation! - but it will need to address two key points:
- Originality: the statement must demonstrate how and why the article makes an original contribution to Australian sociology
- Evidence of impact: the statement must demonstrate impact (on the discipline, in the media, in public debate and ideas, or on citations, public policy, or further research opportunities). You may also comment on why future impact is likely to be high.
The article will be assessed based on both the 150 - 200 word statement and the following criteria:
- Quality (e.g. thoroughness, high skill, eloquence) 20%;
- Contribution to sociological thought (e.g. pushing forward) 20%;
- Originality (e.g. innovative application/generation of theory) 20%;
- Clarity (e.g. well-written, clearly organised, presented) 20%; and
- Impact (e.g. policy 5%, practice 5%, citations 5%, new theory or a new understanding of an existing theory 5%) 20%.
We encourage Sociology Honours and Masters coordinators across the country to put forward nominations for their top-achieving 2025 students. The award is a meaningful way to recognise emerging sociological talent and celebrate academic excellence within our discipline.
Further information and the nomination link can be found here. | | TASA's Career Development Grant seeks to support the career development activities of TASA members where these activities are not covered by other funding.
TASA's Career Development Grant is targeted at TASA members who are PhD students, early career (5 years post-PhD) or mid-career members (10 years post-PhD) with career interruptions, considered. The grants are intended for members who have limited or no access to funding for career development activities.
A total of AU$4,500 is available, with a maximum of AU$1,500 available per applicant.
Applications close on 12 May.
| | | | TASA's Gary Bouma Memorial Workshop Funding, for 2027 events, is open for applications. Successful workshops will advance research within sociology and showcase TASA as the face of sociological/interdisciplinary research in the region; engaging with issues of national concern; advancement of knowledge; support innovative ideas, and, the potential of feeding into policy and practice development.
Funding of AU$5,000 (per workshop) available for workshops to be held in Australia.
Applications close on 17 July, 2026.
| | | | Na'ama Carlin, Louise Chappell, Siobhan O'Sullivan (2026) Being Patient: Close Encounters in Cancer World. New South. | Na’ama Carlin, Louise Chappell and Siobhan O’Sullivan all received the diagnosis people dread – cancer. Working in universities, these three women knew how to speak up. But in Cancer World, their voices were often unheard. As they negotiated medical hierarchies, ‘scanxiety’, gender bias, ongoing treatments and confronting diagnoses, they met others who felt the same.
In Being Patient, Na’ama, Louise and Siobhan share their own stories and talk to people about their experiences as patients and carers in Cancer World. Including stories from cancer experts – oncologists, GPs, nurses, surgeons, radiologists and researchers – Being Patient is unflinching and uplifting and offers unvarnished views of living with cancer from ‘both sides of the desk’. Read on...
| | | | Chesters, J. (ed.) 2026 Neoliberalism, Inequality and Education: Inequity by Design. Edward Elgar | | This book, edited by TASA member Jenny Chesters, investigates the impact of neoliberalism on inequity in education systems around the world. Leading scholars, including fellow member Quentin Maire, examine how the adoption of neoliberal economic policies has resulted in the marketisation of education systems, where education is regarded as a private rather than public good.
Traditionally, education policy has focused on the benefits of education for the whole society and its integral role in socialising generations of young people in preparation for the contributions that they were expected to make to society during their life course. Although these contributions varied according to gender and socio-economic status, incremental changes over time reflected developments within the economic structure of the society (open access). Read on... | | | Book Chapters
Journals
Op-ed / Commentary
| We are pleased to introduce the conveners of the Crime & Governance Thematic Group. Joseph van Buuren continues in the role, offering valuable continuity and insight from his previous term, alongside Taylor Richardson-Marlton, who joins as a new co-convener.
|  | | Joseph van Buuren is a lecturer in Criminology and Justice Studies in RMIT's School of Global, Urban and Social Studies. His research interests are in the role of English-only language ideologies in the criminalisation of language minoritised peoples by the State, the power of comics and graphic journalism as criminological texts in calling attention to State criminality and harm, and the role of comics and zines as a tool for promoting community legal education. Currently he is researching the increasing militarisation of Higher Education in Australia, and the ways this militarisation intersects with carceral State power.
|  | | Taylor is an early career feminist researcher who recently completed an Honours thesis that explored the affective and material-discursive dynamics of freebirth, how these dynamics inform mothering, and how they imbue women’s lives. The project illuminated the complex political and ethical multiplicities women experience in their matrescent rites of passage while birthing, a new research paradigm in which situated knowledges are at the forefront. Taylor works with feminist, new material, post human, postqualitative (FNMPHPQ) ethico-onto-epistemologies and arts-based, co-creative methods to challenge the traditional scope of what academia considers to be rigorous and valid research. She was recently awarded TASA's Honours/Masters Student Award for the top sociology student at Griffith University for her Honours thesis. Read on... | | |
| THURSDAY 9TH APRIL | 12:30PM AEST
Join the Social Theory thematic group conveners, Jack Barbalet & Gino Orticio for a first in a series of 'social theory' webinars on 9 April (12:30–1:30pm AEST) with Brad West (University of Adelaide). In Learning from C. Wright Mills on the Causes of World War Three, Brad revisits Mills’ overlooked 1958 text to rethink military metaphysics and the contemporary military-industrial complex. Reflecting on renewed Great Power competition and neoliberal transformations of civil-military relations, this timely session invites sociologists to reconsider the military as a central social institution.
| | | The Health Sociology thematic group is hosting an event: Publishing with Sociology of Health and Illness
Online, 14 April, 17:00-18:30 AEST (Australia)
You can access the event via the following link:
| New: Doing media diversity in the west: between reckoning and reaction
Call for Submissions
Journal of Sociology 2027 Special Issue
This issue will explore experiences, debates and theorisations of media diversity in the grip of reckoning, reaction and crisis. It aims to build on the growing field of studies of experiences of media diversity and newsroom cultures—especially those focused on how ‘doing diversity’ is experienced by those charged with ‘being the diversity’ or enacting such changes.
| New: Indigenous queer health and wellbeing: Anticolonial meanings and praxis
Health Sociology Review 2027 Special Issue
This special issue will take an anti-colonial approach to the fields of Indigenous Sociology, Queer Theory, Sociology, Health and/or Wellbeing. However, the special issue will not be limited papers to Sociology alone, aiming for a multidisciplinary approach and a critical engagement with the special issue’s overarching theme in different settler colonial contexts, nationally, regionally and internationally.
Abstract submission deadline: 12 April. Read on...
Applications are invited for the editorship of Health Sociology Review (HSR) for the three-year term 2027 - 2029.
Transition arrangements will begin later in 2026, although the content for the first issue of 2027, and possibly the second, will be finalised by the out-going editorial team.
The application deadline is Monday 22nd June, 2026.
The full details of the call are available on TASAweb here.
| Scholarship Opportunities
| New: Creating Safer Sport Communities from Rural to Urban Australia
This is part of an ARC Discovery project Creating Safer Sport Communities from Rural to Urban Australia
The PhD will be housed within Griffith University’s Centre for Social and Cultural Research, Arts, Education and Law group and the Department of Tourism and Marketing, Griffith Business School.
| New: Lecturer in Geography, Sociology and Political Science
Hong Kong Baptist University
The role includes teaching courses in human geography, physical geography, public administration, general sociology, statistics, research methods, and advanced topics in quantitative analysis across these disciplines.
Visiting Professor of Australian Studies 2027
Graduate School of International Studies, Seoul National University
Commencement of position: February 2027
Conclusion of position: December 2027
Closing date for applications: 13 April. Read on...
| Other Events, News & Opportunities
| Opportunity for ECRs and HDRs
ABC Radio National is once again searching for Australia’s next generation of inspiring research communicators, to take part in this year’s ABC TOP 5 media residencies.
Past TASA member recipients include Barbara Barbosa Neves and Julia Cook.
The ABC TOP 5 gives 15 early career and PhD scholars (five per residency), the chance to spend two-weeks with some of the ABC’s leading journalists and producers
ABC TOP 5 participants receive intensive two-week media training and practical experience, and the aim of the scheme is to enable the selected academics to be the best communicators they can be of their specialist research.
| UNSW Social Policy Research Centre’s (SPRC) short course, Understanding Poverty, Inequality and Social Disadvantage in Australia, is returning in 2026 following three sold-out iterations.
5 May to 23 June
| National survey seeking participants
| Sport and physical activity experiences of women/girls/nonbinary people with disability
The survey is intended for woman/girl/nonbinary person with disability aged 16+, regardless of how much sport you do or do not play.
| National Library of Australia Fellowships
Open to researchers in various fields and disciplines, the fellowships offer financial and research support for dedicated time using the library's collections. Providing extended access to Australia's largest cultural collection, National Library Fellowships foster research that produces new knowledge to shape Australia's intellectual landscape and contributes to public understanding of our collections.
| The Rechnitz Fund Grant Program
Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia
This research funding program is intended to support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to develop their careers as researchers across the social sciences.
Application deadline: 17 April. Read on...
| Seminars
ANU School of Sociology Seminar Series
The program for the ANU School of Sociology Seminar Series is now online. All seminars are hybrid, with options to join via Zoom. Please visit the School’s Humanitix page, here, to view and register for upcoming seminars.
Newcastle Youth Studies Centre (NYSC) 2026 Online Seminar Series
The full 2026 program for the Newcastle Youth Studies Centre’s online seminar series is now out (see below), you can check out each seminar, and register for them, at the NYSC Eventbrite page here.
Note, you can watch the full 2025 recordings at the NYSC's YouTube playlist here.
| Conferences
New: 10th Biennial Social Science Methodology Conference
November 24-26, University of Sydney
Sport, Politics, and Society
The Tunisian-Mediterranean Association for Historical, Social and Economic Studies (TMA for HSES) and the Tunisian World Center for Studies, Research, and Development (TWC for SRD)
December 1, 2, 3 / 2026 (Beja - Tunisia).
Digital and Sexual Citizenship in an Age of Social Media Bans: Interrogating the Rights of Children and Young People
Initiative of the ECU Ethical Digital Futures Group
6-8 July, Perth, in-person only
Abstract and/or panel proposal deadline: 20 April. Read on...
Religion as a Weapon of War: in the past, present and future
World Conference for Religio. us Dialogue and Cooperation
June 22-26. 2026, Skopje, North Macedonia
Abstract submission deadline: 15 April. Read on...
| | New: Internationalising Vegan Sociology
International Association of Vegan Sociologists (IAVS)
Online, October 3 & 4, 2026
The 2026 IAVS annual meeting will showcase research related to veganism, animal rights, and sociological theories of international relevance. They welcome submissions for individual presentations (15 minutes and an additional 5 for questions) or panels (45 minutes with 15 for questions) to be delivered in an online format.
| | | Call for Editors
Journal of Intercultural Studies - call for Associate Editors
Applicants with expertise in cultural studies and postcolonial literature; decolonial studies; race/ethnicity/migration studies are encouraged to apply. Our Associate Editors are based in different locations around the world - applicants from diverse geographies are encourged. Feel free to reach out to the current editors-in-chief if you have any specific queries.
Expression of Interest deadline: 20 April. Read on...
| Call for Submissions
Social Conditions, Clinical Logics: Rethinking Young People’s Engagement with Drug Treatment
International Journal of Drug Policy
This special issue invites submissions that explore or examine how the social conditions of young people’s substance use shape their engagement in drug treatment. Editors are looking for papers that critically explore, among other things, biomedical and psychologised approaches to AOD care, how contexts of crisis and social inequity shape treatment experience, and how treatment might be experienced differently by First Nations, LGBTQ+, refugee, migrant and racialized youth.
Serendipities. Journal for the Sociology and History of the Social Sciences
If you would like to propose a special issue for their collection, please feel free to discuss this with the Managing Editors. If your ideas are further advanced, you are welcome to send them a one-to-two page proposal.
Managing Editors:
- Fran Collyer, University of Wollongong Australia, Fran@francollyer.com
- Kristoffer Kropp, Roskilde University, Denmark, kkropp@ruc.dk
You can find more information about our journal here.
Humanities and Social Sciences Communications
The guest editors of this journal are seeking submissions for the forthcoming edition ‘Reframing artificial intelligence: Critical perspectives from AI social science’
In an era increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence (AI), public and academic discourse is often dominated by polarised narratives—either heralding AI as a solution to complex problems or warning of its dangers … this Collection invites social science perspectives to advance the study of AI’s sociotechnical, cultural and political dimensions.
Submission deadline: 30 April. Read on...
| For membership information, processes, and frequently used resources, visit the Members' Navigator. To contact a member of the team directly, see our TASA Staff page.
| Admin (Sally): admin@tasa.org.au
Events (Penny): events@tasa.org.au
Membership (Ali): membership@tasa.org.au
Indigenous (Yasmin): indigenoussociology@tasa.org.au
Digital Publications Editor (Roger): digitalpe@tasa.org.au
Thematic Groups (Molly): thematicgroups@tasa.org.au
Postgraduates (Brooklyn): postgraduates@tasa.org.au | |