SSSP 2026 Annual Meeting
Date: Saturday, August 8
Time: 2:30 PM - 4:10 PM
Accessibility Committee, 2025-26
Room: Booth Boardroom
Date: Saturday, August 8
Time: 2:30 PM - 4:10 PM
THEMATIC
Session 056: Unequal Environments: Ecological Disparities and Violence
Room: Broadway I
Sponsor: Conflict, Social Action, and Change
Organizers: Jack Mitchel Mills, Florida State University
Andrew Schoeneman, University of Richmond
Presider: Jack Mitchel Mills, Florida State University
Description: Examining ecological disparities and violence demands an interdisciplinary lens that interrogates the complex interplay of environmental, cultural, political, and economic systems. This session explores how structural forces—including toxic colonialism, racial capitalism, and environmental racism—produce and reinforce ecological injustices that disproportionately affect marginalized communities across global and local contexts. Papers may address a range of topics related to environmental inequality, including climate change, resource extraction, land, food and water access, pollution, and other forms of ecological violence.
Papers:
“‘Always Hunting for Water’: Everyday Adaptations and Insecurity beyond Cape Town’s Day Zero,” Kanyisile K. Brukwe, University of Cape Town
“Abolition, Emergent Strategy, and Reimagining Relationships to Land and Food in Chicago,” Zachary J. Kyle, University of Illinois Chicago
“Grievances and Greenlash: A Structural Equation Model of Perceived Discrimination, Populism, and Climate Attitudes,” Saman Seyfi, The University of Oklahoma
“Running Dry: The Covert Competition for Water under Industrial Colonialism in Curaçao,” Archana Ramanujam, Brown University
“When Institutions Fail Communities: A Critical Framework for Analyzing Water Crisis Governance,” Katrinell M. Davis, Florida State University
“‘The Dead River Is Killing Us’: Environmental Risk and Reproductive Decision-Making in Colombia’s Caribbean Coast,” Maria Ximena Davila, The University of Texas at Austin, Winner of the Environment & Technology Division’s Student Paper Competition
Date: Saturday, August 8
Time: 2:30 PM - 4:10 PM
Session 057: New Directions in Institutional Ethnography
Room: Broadway II
Sponsor: Institutional Ethnography
Organizer: Katherine E. Koralesky, University of British Columbia
Presider: Lauren Eastwood, State University of New York, Plattsburgh
Description: This session explores innovative applications of Institutional Ethnography (IE) that address contemporary social issues, shifting political contexts, and emerging methodological intersections. Presenters highlight how IE continues to evolve as a critical, justice-oriented sociology for uncovering ruling relations in everyday life.
Papers:
“Everyday Experience, Institutional Context, and Global Learning: The CRIISIS COIL Model,” Hans-Peter de Ruiter, Minnesota State University
“Insulating Public Health Policymaking: Regulatory Counterpower and Lessons from Chile,” A. Susana Ramírez, University of California, Merced
“Navigating Power and Identity: A Queered Institutional Ethnography of LGBTQIA+ Youth under Title IX in Secondary Education,” Kelley Larson, North Dakota State University
“On the Value of Voting,” Paul Luken, University of West Georgia
“Towards an Institutional Ethnography of Resisting State Violence,” C. Michael Awsumb, Northwest Missouri State University
“When Flexibility isn’t Flexible: How International Graduate Student Motherhood is Institutionally Coordinated,” Fredricka R. Saunders and Laura J. Parson, North Dakota State University
Date: Saturday, August 8
Time: 2:30 PM - 4:10 PM
SPECIAL
Session 058: Publishing Tips from the Editors of Social Problems
Room: Broadway III
Sponsor: Program Committee
Organizer &
Presider: Andrew Fullerton, Oklahoma State University
Description: The publishing process can be confusing at times even for the seasoned scholar. In this session, the co-editors of Social Problems share their experiences as editors, authors, and reviewers and discuss the process of publishing in the journal.
Panelists:
Kelley J. Sittner, Oklahoma State University
Andrew Fullerton, Oklahoma State University
Rachel Schmitz, Oklahoma State University
Date: Saturday, August 8
Time: 2:30 PM - 4:10 PM
Session 059: The Politics of Disinformation and Gender
Room: Manhattan
Sponsor: Gender, Sexual Behavior, Politics, and Communities
Organizer: Kat Fuller, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Presiders: Evansha Andre, University of Central Florida
Shannon K. Carter, University of Central Florida
Description: With the rise of disinformation, misleading narratives in the public sphere have contributed to ongoing societal conflicts. This session explores the role disinformation plays in fascist movements, particularly in relation to gender violence. Examples include anti-LGBTQ+ conspiracy theories, pseudoscience, and the connections between anti-intellectualism and anti-feminism. The session also examines how disinformation shapes public opinion and policy in everyday life, as well as strategies for debunking and preventing the spread of misinformation.
Papers:
“Correcting Gender Disinformation in Higher Education: Evaluating Safe Zone Allies Training as an Institutional Intervention,” Shannon E. Hart, Rutgers University, M. E. Betsy Garrison and Kate Chapman, University of Arkansas
“Disinformation and Citation Politics in Gen-AI: Scholarly Essays on Race Inequities in Cesarean Births,” Shannon K. Carter, Sara Tehrani, Jonzelle Bell, Tara Delgado and Evansha Andre, University of Central Florida
“Crafting Tradition: Examining Constructions of Gender Expectations in the #TradWife Movement,” Kelli Ann C. Kimura, University of California, Irvine and Katelyn Rose Malae, Utah Valley University
“How Black Women Harm Black Women,” Tyshawn Khaalis Smithers, Virginia Commonwealth University
“Disturbing Queer Black Youth: A Systematic Literature Review of the Intersections of Race, Queer Identity, and Student Voice in Special Education Scholarship on Emotional Disturbance,” Jocardo Edward Ralston, University of Pennsylvania
“SORVO: Systemic Oppression and Sexual Violence,” Omny Miranda-Martone, Katie Knick and Michelle Reilly, Sexual Violence Prevention Association (SVPA)
Date: Saturday, August 8
Time: 2:30 PM - 4:10 PM
Session 060: NYC Immigrant Organizers in Conversations
Room: Melville
Sponsor: Critical Race and Ethnic Study
Organizer &
Facilitator: Felicia Arriaga, Baruch College, CUNY
Description: This session brings together immigrant organizers and immigrant rights advocacy group representatives based in New York City to examine ongoing immigration enforcement, detention, and deportation practices, as well as collective responses to challenge them. The discussion encourages attendees to consider how these insights might inform efforts in their own communities. Participants are also invited to share their experiences to foster an informed dialogue about organizing and advocacy efforts across the country.
Panelists:
Lemmah Nasrati, Community Lawyer
Tania Mattos, Unlocal
Janay Cauthen, Families for Freedom
Date: Saturday, August 8
Time: 2:30 PM - 4:10 PM
Session 061: CRITICAL DIALOGUE: Labor and Class II
Room: Palace
Sponsors: Labor Studies
Poverty, Class, and Inequality
Organizers: Leticia Morales, University of Southern California
Sara Maani, University of Bologna
Presider/Discussant: Leticia Morales, University of Southern California
Description: The session examines how labor and class intersect to shape lived experiences, social structures, and professional opportunities. Presenters highlight dynamics of working-class life, the impact of precarity and contingent labor, and the ways in which class stratification intersects with race, gender, and migration. The papers foreground how class is reproduced, contested, and transformed within institutions and everyday life. Session I Session II
Papers explore stratification, mobility, and social reproduction across education, care, migration, health, and policy regimes, showing how class positions are allocated, institutionalized, and reproduced over time.
Papers examine labor processes, workplace organization, precarity, and lived experience. They analyze how work is structured, intensified, and governed across sectors, and how insecurity, health risks, and vulnerability emerge within concrete settings.
Papers:
“‘A Different World’: Precarity Chains, Frayed Family Safety Nets, and Interweaving Substances as Factors Contributing to Opioid Use among the Working Class,” Victor Tan Chen, Katrina Hamilton and Erin C. Tucker, Virginia Commonwealth University
“Cut Labor: Perceptual Fragmentation in the Social Form of Service Work,” Yiming Bai, Brandeis University
“Disposable Products, Disposable Workers: Understanding How Dollar Stores Profit from Poverty,” Tracy L. Vargas, University of North Carolina at Pembroke
“Invisible Labor: Substance Use among Agricultural Workers,” Leticia Morales, University of Southern California
“Job Insecurity in the AI Age: Squaring Predictions with U.S. Workers’ Realities,” Jeffrey C. Dixon, College of the Holy Cross
“Merit as a Boundary-Making Regime: Cultural Constructions of Technological Excellence and Work Devotion in China’s High-Tech Industry,” Lingyan Tu, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
“The Household Precarity Index: Measuring Objective and Subjective Elements of Insecurity during the Pandemic,” Emily Bonner, University of Oklahoma, Rin Ferraro, Sam Houston State University and Yung Chun, Washington University in St. Louis
Date: Saturday, August 8
Time: 2:30 PM - 4:10 PM
Session 062: CRITICAL DIALOGUE: Co-constructing Methodologies for Community-engaged, Participatory Action Research
Room: Pearl
Sponsors: Community, Research, and Practice
Global
Organizers &
Presiders/Discussants: Sarah E. Stanlick, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Beatriz Padilla, University of South Florida
Description: In this session, we seek work rooted in community voice that disrupts deficit-based narratives in community-based participatory action research. We highlight methodologies that center epistemic justice through meaningful co-creation. This session promotes research ethics grounded in relationality, challenges the university–academic divide, and interrogates Global North–South divides in knowledge production and social problem definitions.
Papers:
“‘Us for Ourselves’: Civil Society Organizing under Poverty Dysgovernance in a Brazilian Informal Settlement,” Anjuli Fahlberg, Tufts University, Cristiane Martins, Building Together Research Collective, Sophia Costa, The University of Chicago, Ana Claudia Araujo, Lidiane Santos and Joiceane Lopes, Building Together Research Collective
“Capturing Community Knowledge about Reconciliation through Interactive Theatre: Developing Phenomenological Methods for Arts-Based Research,” Lily Ivanova, University of British Columbia
“Collective Knowing: Feminist Relationality and a Community-to-Be,” Liying Huang, University of Chicago Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice
“Multi-Grade, Multi-Level Methodology: Decolonial Praxis of Education in Rural India from Peace Education Perspectives,” Ashmeet Kaur, Independent Researcher
“Podcasting, Conscientization, and the Rebirth of a Marriage Migrant Women’s Movement in Taiwan,” Hsiao-Chuan Hsia, Graduate Institute of Social Work, National Chengchi University, Taiwan
“Teaching Graduate Qualitative Methods through Community-Based Participatory Research and Decolonizing Methodologies: Strengths, Limitations, and Challenges,” Angela Vergara, University of Central Florida
“Through the Lens of Trauma: Justice-Informed, Community-Engaged Reflections from Cross-Cultural Trauma-Informed Research in Kenya,” Rashad Freeman and Jerono P. Rotich, Indiana University School of Public Health-Bloomington, Josephine Mwangi, Kenyatta University, Erin Cooperman, Indiana University School of Public Health-Bloomington, Channa Beth Butcher, E3 Kenya and Priscilla A. Barnes, Indiana University School of Public Health-Bloomington
Date: Saturday, August 8
Time: 2:30 PM - 4:10 PM
Session 063: State of Policing II
Room: Plymouth
Sponsor: Crime and Justice
Organizers &
Presiders: Jennifer M. Carpenter, Georgia State University
Kelly M. Tabbutt, Alfred University
Description: This session welcomes work across the spectrum of perspectives on policing. It includes research addressing challenges to effective crime control as well as challenges arising from policing practices. Contributions may range from analyses of police abolition and disparate police involvement (overpolicing) to examinations of insufficient responsiveness (underpolicing) within marginalized communities. Topics may also address the necessity and value of policing, including misuse of force, bias in surveillance and interactions, interrogation practices, carceral system capture (e.g., arrest), and the criminalization of immigration, including the expanded powers of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Papers:
“‘That’s My Tribute to Him’: The Relationality and Disenfranchisement of Black Grief after Police Violence,” Nora Gross, Barnard College, Columbia University, Uzma H. Chowdhury, Teachers College, Columbia University, Betselot Wondimu, Columbia University and Joseph Sanchez, Teachers College, Columbia University
“Challenges of Police Accountability and Data Collection regarding Civilian Complaints in California, 2019–2025,” Alexandra Hiropoulos, California State University, Stanislaus
“Demographic Perspectives on Public Distrust in the South African Police Service,” Emeka E. Obioha, Walter Sisulu University
“Producing Stigma at the Street Level: Policing Overdose and Moral Regulation,” Stephanie Cecava-Scott and Joshua H. Stout, Illinois State University
“The Health Costs of Social Control: A Mixed-Methods Study of Structural Violence, Policing, and Mental Well-Being among African Americans,” Robert L. Peralta, The University of Akron, Daniela Jauk-Ajamie and Joann Xi, University of Akron and Harun Rashid, Kent State University
“Widening the Gap: Identifying a Mismatch between Policing and Community Needs in Addressing Violent Crime,” Stacey L. Barrenger, Northeast Ohio Medical University, Daniela Jauk-Ajamie, University of Akron, Leslie L. Wood, York Technical College, Insun Park, University of Akron and Natalie Bonfine, Northeast Ohio Medical University
