Sol Plaatje University (SPU) is to host the 27th South African Sociology Association (SASA) conference from 10 to 13 July 2022, themed “Sociology and the COVID-19 pandemic: Reimagining the present and future”.
The local organising committee is chaired by the School of Humanities’ Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Dr Crispen Chinguno, and includes several members of the School, SPU departments, and other external stakeholders.
The SASA Annual Conference provides a forum for academic researchers, practitioners, activists and policymakers to discuss the complexities of the unfolding COVID-19 pandemic.
The keynote address will be delivered by the President of the International Sociology Association (ISA), Professor Sari Hanafi, from American University of Beirut, and his presentation will be titled “Toward a post-COVID-19 dialogical sociology”. ISA is the global professional association for sociology.
Professor Hanafi has in recent years been involved as an eminent scholar in the global debate on the effects of COVID-19 on society and the everyday lived experience and what the new normal would be like.
There is a need to interrogate the various forms of responses, policies, trends, debates, discourses, the various actors involved and the future direction and landscape.
The Association says such a discussion cannot simply be left in the hands of bureaucrats alone but needs to find resonance with, and be animated by, academics, researchers, students, activists and the broader public.
Hence, COVID-19 has raised several questions of interest to sociology, sociologists and society.
Some of the themes that will help to unpack the issue at the conference include:
• COVID-19 pandemic and work
• COVID-19 and vaccine politics
• Gender, inequalities, and the pandemic
• Mobilities in the era of a global pandemic
• Education and the COVID-19 pandemic
• Doing research/ethnography during the lockdown.
The organisation, which will celebrate its 30th birthday next year, was established to promote the discipline and profession of sociology, promote research, teaching and debate about society, and promote cooperation at the national, regional and international levels among persons engaged in the study of sociology.
