GRADUATE STUDENT PAPER COMPETITON

Deadline: 1/31/25

The Community, Research, and Practice Division announces its 2025 Graduate Student Paper Competition.

Paper topics can focus on various aspects of communities, including their capacity, development, renewal, and relationship with other social issues or problems. Qualitative and quantitative empirical analyses, applied research, and theoretical papers are welcome. To be eligible for submission, a paper must not be published nor accepted for publication (but it may be submitted for publication, and it may be accepted for publication after submission). Papers must be student-authored; they may be authored by a single student or co-authored by more than one student but may not be co-authored by a faculty member or other non-student. Papers must not exceed 25 double-spaced pages (including all notes, references, and tables), and should include a brief abstract. To be eligible for the award, the author(s) must commit to present the paper at a session during the 2025 SSSP Annual Meeting in Chicago.

To be considered, submit (a) a copy of the manuscript, (b) a cover letter specifying that the paper is to be considered in the Community, Research, and Practice Division Graduate Student Paper Competition, and (c) a short letter from each author’s advisor certifying the person’s status as a student and including some brief comments about the research. All materials must be submitted electronically to the Annual Meeting Call for Papers on the SSSP conference website by January 31, 2025, and sent to the Committee Chair, Dr. Annette Mackey, e-mail: annette.mackay@oneonta.edu. Please note that students may only submit to one division. The winner will receive a $100 cash award, student membership and conference registration provided by the SSSP, and recognition at the SSSP awards ceremony.

COMMUNITY PARTNER PAPER AWARD

Deadline: 1/31/25

The Community, Research, and Practice Division announces its 2025 Community Partner Paper Competition.

Consistent with our division’s mission, this paper award is intended to recognize rigorous academic work that has practical implications for members of marginalized communities and, specifically, to celebrate community-engaged work.

Paper topics can focus on various social issues and problems related to community, such as the causes and consequences of communities’ exclusion or marginalization from processes and resources, the capacities and strengths of communities and community movements, and the development and changes within communities. Qualitative and quantitative empirical analyses, applied research, and theoretical papers are welcome.

The following criteria for this award were developed based on standards of Community Based Research. Although papers do not need to meet all of these criteria, greater consideration will be given to research that demonstrates more of these criteria:

  • Research questions and/or focus reflects priorities of community partners;
  • Research encourages involvement of community in all aspects of research design including data collection methods to incorporate language, perspectives and experiences of participants;
  • Research encourages involvement of community in analysis and writing of paper, including co-authorship with community;
  • Research process provides member access to one another’s expertise, demonstrating an appreciation of academic and local community knowledge;
  • Results are ‘owned’ by the community;
  • Research has consequences for guiding social action, policy or program change for community;
  • Research democratizes and decolonizes the knowledge creation process by re-imagining relationships between researchers and subjects of research.

Papers may be pre-published or published in 2023-present. Papers may be coauthored by more than one faculty member, community member and/or student. Community partners are characterized by any community-based entity or representative that is outside of the academy. Papers must not exceed 25 double-spaced pages (including all notes, references, and tables), and should include a brief abstract. To be eligible for the award, the author(s) must make a commitment to present the paper at a session during the 2025 SSSP Annual Meeting in Chicago.

To be considered, submit (a) a copy of the manuscript, (b) a cover letter specifying that the paper is to be considered in the Community, Research, and Practice Division Community Partner Paper Competition, and (c) a brief letter from the community partner commenting on their role in the paper. All materials must be submitted electronically to the Annual Meeting Call for Papers on the SSSP conference website by January 31, 2025 and also sent to the Committee Chair, Dr. Urmitapa Dutta email: urmitapa_dutta@uml.edu. The winner will receive recognition at the Community, Research, and Practice Division business meeting.

STUDENT PUBLIC SCHOLARSHIP AWARD

Deadline: 1/31/25

The Community, Research, and Practice Division announces its Student Public Scholarship Award. These awards seek to recognize undergraduate and graduate student research that improves public welfare, broadly understood, and/or improves the lives of research participants, and generates non-traditional scholarly products presented in a manner that is widely accessible to targeted audiences and/or the general public. Acceptable submissions include publicly disseminated works, such as Op-Eds, public media appearances, infographics, policy briefs, program evaluations, white papers, reports, translations of scientific or other scholarly findings into accessible formats, site revitalization plans, concept maps, videos, or other creative products designed to respond to and inform broader publics.

Submissions should include a brief abstract and a copy of the work. To be eligible for the award, the author(s) must commit to present the work at a session during the 2025 SSSP Annual Meeting in Chicago, and be willing to share the work on the Society for the Study of Social Problems website and related social media.

To be considered, submit (a) a copy of the work, (b) a cover letter specifying that the work is to be considered in the Community, Research, and Practice Division Public Scholarship Competition, and indicate if you are applying to the Undergraduate or Graduate Student award, and (c) a short letter from each author’s advisor certifying the person’s status as a student and including some brief comments about the research.

All materials must be submitted electronically to the Annual Meeting Call for Papers on the SSSP conference website by January 31, 2025, and also sent to the Committee Chair, Dr. Teresa Gonzales, email: tgonzales3@luc.edu. Please note that students may only submit to one division. There will be one Undergraduate Student winner and one Graduate Student winner; each will receive a $100 cash award and recognition at the Community, Research, and Practice Division business meeting.