The 2022 Annual Meeting of the ISA RC19

Challenges to social policy in the Covid-19 and (post)Covid recovery period: implications, solutions and innovations

The conference will take place in a hybrid format, this means there will be a possibility for those whose papers will be accepted, but they cannot travel to present their papers and follow the conference online.

The Covid-19 pandemic presented significant social policy challenges with long-term impacts. Countries around the world have implemented containment policies that may have lasting effects on human health, education, the workplace, working conditions, consumer habits, housing markets, travel and tourism as well as many other aspects of everyday life. These changes exert strong pressure on social protection systems. Yet, the Covid-19 pandemic has been coupled with new and old challenges such as climate change, population ageing, increased migration, lack of decent jobs, growing inequality, and in-work poverty. The (post)Covid recovery period should address these challenges and seek creative solutions to such problems. The theme of the 2022 RC 19 annual conference is social policy development in the post-Covid-19 era. It welcomes comparative and case study papers that cover a broad range of social policy issues. The focus is on the post Covid-19 world, the implication of the pandemic on people’s wellbeing, and innovative social policy solutions implemented around the globe that come out of the Covid crisis.

The RC19 annual meeting brings together international scholars in the fields of social policy studies, encompassing a range of disciplines including sociology, social policy, social work, public administration, political science, and economics. All RC 19 members are invited to present their work, even if it is not directly connected to the theme of the conference.

Abstracts from non-RC19 members are most welcome, but all presenters must be members of RC19 by the time of the conference. To join, please contact our treasurer, Timo Fleckenstein, at t.fleckenstein@lse.ac.uk.

You are invited to submit an abstract of about 350 words, including information on the name(s) and affiliation(s) of the author(s) and the email address of the corresponding author to RC19conference2022@lstc.lt.

The deadline for abstract submission is 20 April 2022.

Conference Format 

The conference will be organized according to Korpi’s Rules to foster lively discussion and scholarly exchange. The rules are named for Walter Korpi, past president of RC19, who instituted a workshop-style meeting format that the membership continues to find congenial: 

· papers are circulated (and read) in advance;  

· at the conference the papers are introduced by a discussant (rather than the author);  

· the author is given only a limited time to react to the discussant's presentation so as to leave more room for general discussion.  

Thus, accepting a place on the program entails a commitment to complete the paper in time for others to read it and to come prepared to discuss other authors’ papers. Equally, participants may expect to serve as discussant for another paper, and to open the floor with an incisive and fair assessment of its strengths and weaknesses. Completed papers are therefore due 24 July 2022 and circulated to conference participants via the conference website. 

Important dates:

Submission of abstracts: 20 April 2022

Notification of acceptance: 25 April 2022

Early registration: starts from 16 May 2022 till 20 June

Late registration: starts from 21 June till 24 July 2022

Deadline of final registration: 24 of July 2022

Full paper submission: 24 July 2022

Conference organizers:

Jolanta Aidukaitė (Institute of Sociology, Lithuanian Centre for Social Policy)

Inga Gaižauskaitė (Institute of Sociology, Lithuanian Centre for Social Policy)

Sarmitė Mikulionienė (Institute of Sociology, Lithuanian Centre for Social Policy)

Tautvydas Vencius (Institute of Sociology, Lithuanian Centre for Social Policy)

Kristina Senkuvienė (Institute of Sociology, Lithuanian Centre for Social Policy)

Violeta Vilkoitytė (Institute of Sociology, Lithuanian Centre for Social Policy)

Rimantas Junevičius (Institute of Sociology, Lithuanian Centre for Social Policy)