Dear ~~first_name~~,
As a final friendly reminder, if you would like something included on TASA's Annual General Meeting agenda, or would like to submit an apology, please email the details to Sally in TASA Admin by this Monday November 10, 2025.
We invite you to read on for news of new members' publications, events and more.
Warm regards,
Sally, Penny and Ali
TASA Team
| A very warm welcome to new TASA members Bhawana Bhawana, Nyasha Chiwota and Michelle Saffin, we hope you are enjoying the Newsletter and discovering the many benefits of TASA Membership. We'd also like to acknowledge all our renewing members who have made the choice to continue their TASA Membership, providing essential support to the work of sociologists in all sectors. Your contribution is appreciated.
| | TASA 2025 Conference Program
You can search by day, track, thematic group, workshop, social function, or keynote, and even download a personalised program containing only the sessions you wish to attend.
You can access the program here. | | | Amanda Keddie & Michael Flood (2025) Young Men’s Online Lives: Cultivating Critical Digital Dispositions for Gender Justice. Palgrave Macmillan.
| | This Palgrave Pivot offers insight into the factors that influence, motivate and inform young men’s online experiences. In Australia and globally recent media and public discourse has expressed strong concerns about the gender-based harms arising from young men’s online behaviours – these concerns have prompted renewed scrutiny on boys and masculinity and produced a sense of urgency around addressing these online harms. They have provided a strong warrant for research that seeks to better understand how young men are navigating their online worlds. This book presents findings from a qualitative study of 117 young men in Australia. In foregrounding a diversity of young men’s voices, the book responds to calls for more nuance and care in how we debate the gendered impact of social media on young men’s lives. Read on... | | | MacLean, S. J., de Kleyn, L., Cook, M., & Rickards, L. (2025). Climate change necessitates a concerted and coordinated response from the alcohol and other drugs sector. Drugs: Education, Prevention and Policy, 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1080/09687637.2025.2566010 [full access].
| Introducing Special Sections
Following the recent launch of a new paper type for Journal of Sociology, Teaching Notes, the JoS team are launching a new feature called Special Sections. They invite proposals at any time for thematic sections that consist of three or four standard 8,000 word papers, framed with a 4,000 word introduction. This will be an ideal format for developing and publishing outcomes from, for instance, a conference panel, a smaller research network, or papers in conversation around a hot topic. Special Sections are designed to be a smaller, more manageable version of a special issue and will feature in standard issues along with regular papers.
If you would like to pitch a special section, please write firstly to our Managing Editor, Dr Amy Vanderharst.
| The latest special issue of the Journal of Sociology explores ‘Equity in the creative industries’ in the context of a changing employment landscape in Australia. Inequality is central to understanding the social consequences and distribution of cultural work. The COVID-19 pandemic, rise of digital cultural production, growth of media sharing platforms, and instability of changes in government (and policy) have both disrupted and re-organised cultural work. The collection of articles aims to develop debate on competing imaginaries of the lived experiences of workers, and to shed light on the struggle and complexities of contemporary creative labour.
All articles have been published on open access and are available here.
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Event Details
Date: Friday 21 November
Time: 9:30am - 5:00pm
Location: Monash University City Campus
Cost: TASA Member In-person - $40 | TASA Member PG, Casual, unwaged In-person- $15 | Non Member In-person $40 | Online - Complimentary
REGISTRATIONS CLOSE TOMORROW 7th November
| | | Other Events, News & Opportunities
| New: SHAPE Futures, a network for EMCRs in the HASS disciplines, is holding its 2025 Annual Convention on Thursday 27th November from 230-5pm at the Jim Potter Room at The University of Melbourne.
The event, which is on the topic of 'Navigating the Funding Landscape' is occurring at the same time and in the same location as our TASA Conference.
The event is completely FREE and involves a catered networking function. It is a great opportunity to mingle with other EMCRs in the HASS disciplines.
Further details are provided in the flyer on the left and you can register here.
| | | New: Academic Freedom: The right to enquire?
University of Melbourne
25th November, 8:30am - 6pm
Earnest discussions about academic freedom are often prompted by events outside the academy. The McCarthy era “loyalty oaths” imposed in some 1950s US universities provide one example. More recently, there have been some high-profile cases of alleged deplatforming accompanied by persistent populist anxieties about speech codes, cancel culture, and safe spaces.
As Robert French AC has recognised, it is important, in thinking about academic freedom, to distinguish what it permits (and in turn requires) from more general notions of freedom of speech. Academic freedom is recommended on the grounds that it is crucial to effective knowledge-making and, unlike unfettered freedom of speech, is practised subject to the norms and values of scholarly and scientific enquiry.
This symposium seeks to explore these enduring as well as pressing themes, questions and dilemmas.
| Edited Volume - call for contributions
| New: Constructive Alcohol: production, consumption, everything else (working title)
The book will be a response to Mary Douglas’ ground-breaking work Constructive Drinking (1987). Published nearly 40 years ago, Constructive Drinking continues to be a touchstone for research that foundationally acknowledges that ‘drinking’ is always socio-culturally constructed, historically contingent and morally relativistic. Douglas and her contributors firmly rejected approaches that assumptively problematized or pathologized alcohol and instead critically analysed benefits ascribed to alcohol in different social settings. Moreover, our proposed book comes at a time when alcohol is subject to multiple criticisms and challenges, not least of which are the World Health Organisation’s repeated declarations that there is no safe level of alcohol consumption; the impacts of climate change; and declining consumption globally.
| Mark Davis' Thesis 11 Annual Lecture - Relational Sociology in Action! Zelizer and the Climate Crisis
Thursday November 27th, 6-8pm AEDT
Greek Centre for Contemporary Culture, Melbourne
Prof Mark Davis joins TASA 2025for the Thesis Eleven annual lecture to explore sociology’s role in addressing challenges like the climate crisis.
2025 Agnes Heller Lecture - AI, Care, and Ageing Futures
Presenter: fellow member Barbara Barbosa Neves
Level 2, Room 2.10, La Trobe City Campus
November 18th, 1:45pm - 3:30pm AEDT
From courtrooms to care homes, AI is remaking what it means to be old. On one hand, AI-driven hiring platforms are facing lawsuits for discriminating against older applicants. On the other, headlines celebrate robots to solve the so-called aged care crisis, alongside multimillion-dollar investments in chatbots that promise to cure loneliness among older people.
| Kohli Fellowship 2026
Berlin Social Science Center (WZB)
The Kohli Fellowship is awarded to a promising early-stage researcher in sociology. The fellowship is awarded for 24 months. The current monthly stipend is € 2,500, subject to revision.
Application deadline: November 16. Read on... | Call - Advisory Committee Members
| Advisory Committee on the Environmental Management of Industrial Chemicals (IChEMS Advisory Committee).
This independent expert committee advises the Minister for Environment and Water on scheduling decisions. These decisions help ensure industrial chemicals are managed safely.
The committee may provide advice on chemical properties, relevant environmental risks, end uses, and socio-economic factors.
A Candidate Information Pack can be downloaded from their website.
Application deadline: TOMORROW November 7. Read on...
| Western Sydney University, Sexualities and Genders Research (SaGR) presents our famous, excellent, fun annual research showcase on Nov 10th 2pm-4:30pm at Parramatta City Campus, along with the launch of our 5 year review report. Attend to see researchers and community partners speed present their contemporary research, and network with other Sexualities, Genders and feminist scholars.
Newcastle Youth Studies Online Seminar Series
The Newcastle Youth Studies Centre is a collaborative group of researchers who work with young people to understand their lives, cultural, and economic forces they are living in. They have the following online seminars scheduled:
- ‘Your mum didn’t take selfies’: Youth and image cultures on social media (November 19)
| BSA Annual Conference 2026: 75 Years of Sociology
University of Edinburgh, UK
8-10 April 2026
Predoctoral Preconference
Work and Family Researchers Network Conference
The Predoctoral Preconference will provide workshops intended to help graduate students form meaningful connections with diverse scholars, learn about publication strategies, as well as how to engage with stakeholders such as organisational leaders or policy advocates.
| | Reimagining Boyhood: Addressing the wellbeing of boys and young men through education
21 January, 2026
The University of Queensland
Key Speakers include fellow member Garth Stahl.
This event brings together leading international voices, cutting-edge research, and the shared commitment of schools and educators to shape the future of boys’ education, exploring identity, wellbeing, belonging, and learning in boyhood. With keynote speakers, expert panels, and interactive workshops, this full-day program offers evidence-based insights and practical strategies that educators can apply directly.
| | | Special Issues - call for submissions
| Professionalism beyond the Global North: A Space for New Theoretical Developments
Current Sociology Monographs
This issue invites contributions that advance sociological research on professions, professionalism, and expertise in the Global South—broadly defined to include Africa, Asia, Latin America, Southern and Eastern Europe, and Oceania
The Normative Turn in Sociology. Opening the Black Box
Sociology’s special issue hopes to lay the groundwork for a sociology of normativity; that is, a form of sociology (be it “critical” or otherwise) which is expressly normative. Editors are looking for contributions, theoretical and/or empirical, that engage with the question of normativity in sociology.
Paper submission deadline: 22 January. Read on...
Earning while Learning: Experiences, patterns and the political economy of working students
Work, Employment and Society’s new special issue aims to interrogate and fundamentally reconceptualize the relationship between earning and learning, bringing together different disciplinary approaches to interrogate student work and the global political economy that shapes it.
Paper submission deadline: 27 February. Read on...
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...
|  | The Jobs & Scholarships Board allows you to view opportunities that TASA Admin and fellow members have posted.
In 4 easy steps, you can upload job & scholarship opportunities from your member's profile screen. For instructions, visit here.
The Jobs & Scholarships Board is a public facing searchable feature of TASAweb.
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 | TASA’s Executive Committee (EC) governs the Association and manages its daily business as outlined in the Constitution and by established policies. A call for nominations for the 2027 – 2028 Executive term will be disseminated on July 1, 2026.
The November 2024 - November 2026 Executive Team can be viewed on TASAweb here.
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 | TASA was officially established under the name of the Sociological Association of Australia and New Zealand (SAANZ) in 1963, crystallising what was a long, and perhaps delayed process of the discipline’s development in Australia.
For the 50th anniversary celebrations in 2013, pages on TASA's history were added to TASAweb.
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 | The more members TASA has, the stronger our association can be.
To help spread the word about TASA, you can quickly and easily gift a TASA membership to someone from within your TASA membership profile.
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 | | TASA members have free access to over 90 peer-reviewed Sage Sociology full-text collection online journals encompassing over 63,000 articles. The image on the left shows you where to access those journals, as well as the Sage Research Methods Collection & the Taylor and Francis Full Text Collection, when logged in to TASAweb. If needed, here is a short instructive video on how to access the online resources. |
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 | TASA currently has 27 thematic groups in operation and members can join up to 4 groups. This can be done quickly, and easily via your membership profile.
Watch the very short video (1:30) to learn how to join a thematic group/s.
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 | TASA's Membership Directory allows you to search for members by country and state. It also has search functions for members of a particular thematic group, and members who are available for supervision and/or mentoring.
To learn how to search the Membership Directory, watch this very short video (1 min).
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 | Via your membership profile, you can update many options including adding a secondary email address, and indicating if you are available for mentoring, supervising, consulting, and/or talking to the media, for example. If you are in a Tier 2, Tier 3 & Tier 4 membership category, you can also opt in or out of receiving a hard copy of the Journal of Sociology.
All of these changes can be done quickly and easily. To learn how, watch this video (1 min). |
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Personal pronoun preferences can be added to your profile. There are 9 combination options to choose from. Please let Sally in TASA Admin know if your preference/s is not on the list and we will have them added.
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 | We encourage you to support your colleagues by sharing details of your latest publications with them via this newsletter. No publication is too big or too small.
Any mention of sociology is of value to our association, and to the discipline, so please do email through details of your latest publication/s (fully referenced & with a link, where possible), events, job adverts etc. for the next newsletter, to TASA Admin (right click to retrieve the email address). Usually, the newsletter is disseminated every Thursday morning. |
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 | As part of the agreement with Taylor & Francis, TASA members are entitled to a 30% books discount. This discount is valid on any full priced CRC Press or Routledge book.
To access the book discount, click on the following link and then log in to TASAweb: book discount link. |
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Admin (Sally): admin@tasa.org.au
Events (Penny): events@tasa.org.au
Membership (Ali): membership@tasa.org.au
Digital Publications Editor (Roger): digitalpe@tasa.org.au
Indigenous (John): indigenousmembership@tasa.org.au
Thematic Groups (Naomi): thematicgroups@tasa.org.au
Postgraduates (Molly): postgraduates@tasa.org.au | |