CFP for next year’s 39th Annual Qualitative Analysis Conference, June 14-16, 2023, Kelowna, BC, Canada.
In addition to the call itself, we are very pleased to announce the plenary speakers for 2023. Dr. Stefan Timmermans (University of California-Los Angeles) will give the keynote address while Dr. Kishonna L. Gray (University of Kentucky) and Dr. Hannah Wohl (University of California-Santa Barbara) will join us as featured speakers! As always, visit our website, www.qualitatives.ca for the most up-to-date information.
We look forward to seeing many of you join us again this year, in Kelowna.
The 39th Qualitative Analysis Conference
Are We Talking in Circles? Expanding Ideas and Perspectives in Qualitative Research
University of British Columbia-Okanagan
Kelowna, B.C., Canada
June 14-16, 2023
Abstract Submission Deadline: October 15, 2022
“Our life is an apprenticeship to the truth, that around every circle another can be drawn … The extent to which this generation of circles, wheel without wheel, will go, depends on the force or truth of the individual soul.” Ralph Waldo Emerson, Circles, 1841.
The metaphor of the circle is a powerful one, in life, intellectual ideas, and indeed, in our world of interpretive theory and qualitative research. As Emerson reminds us, our circles of comprehension provide a sense of completion and wholeness, yet nature, no less the obdurate empirical social world we study, often refuses to remain within their limits.[1] Our traditional paradigms may thus require revision and extension as we grapple with emergent problems and issues. Circles may also stand as useful representations of cultural symbolism and forms of social organization, such as collaborative circles, social/intellectual circles, and broader circles of influence through subcultures and networks. We often use circles as tools to map the structures and dynamics of the social worlds we study.[2] If the circle points to social, virtual and conceptual space, then the wheel points to the progress of our perspectives over time. It is often important to revisit and challenge old (and new) ideas across generations, and similar patterns can be seen within our own research projects. For example, Kathy Charmaz emphasized the need to revisit field sites, qualitative data, and conceptual codes and theories, putting them in creative dialogue to generate novel insights and breakthroughs.[3]
Finding inspiration in the metaphor of the circle, we invite a range of theoretical, methodological, and empirical papers under the broad umbrella of interpretive and qualitative research. How do our theoretical perspectives invite us to draw conceptual boundaries, which provide resources but also create challenges in the face of emergent data? How might the metaphor of the circle help us to understand the social and cultural makeup of the groups we study? And, how do our ideas evolve, through dialogue with old and new thinkers over generations, but also in the process of our own emergent research projects? We invite papers on this theme, but also welcome submissions on all aspects of interpretive theory and qualitative research from a broad range of academic disciplines.
Abstracts can be submitted online at www.qualitatives.ca/submit-abstract. If you have any questions, please contact us at thequalitatives@gmail.com. See you in Kelowna in 2023!