The GLRC is pleased to announce its upcoming 9th annual Graduate Student Symposium: Critical Conversations in Work and Labour. This conference is designed to showcase the scholarship of new voices in labour studies across a diverse range of disciplines. It is our hope that the workshop will provide an interdisciplinary venue for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows to share their research in a collaborative and supportive environment.
Highlights
- John Eleen Lecture: What is Antiracism? And Why it means Anticapitalism, by Arun Kundnani.
- Students' oral presentations (in-person sessions on February 20 and online sessions on February 21). See Call for Papers, below.
- Professional workshop where invited panelists will talk about (i) key aspects of academic life and (ii) career paths beyond academia.
- Social/networking opportunities.
- After the conference, presenters will be invited to submit their papers to Workplace: a Journal for Academic Labor.
Organizing Committee
- Alaa Abdelhamid, PhD student in Sociology
- Nicole Jokinen-Hurl, MA student in Sociology
- Tinu Koithara Mathew, PhD student in the School of Human Resource Management
- Julie Wilson, Undergraduate student in Political Science and Work and Labour Studies
Call for Papers : Critical Conversations in Work and Labour
February 20 and 21, 2025
York University, Toronto, Canada
Deadline for submissions: December 8, 2024
The Global Labour Research Centre (GLRC) at York University invites proposals for presentations at its upcoming Graduate Student Symposium: Critical Conversations in Work and Labour, which will take place on February 20 and 21, 2025.
We’re thrilled to announce that the 2025 Graduate Student Symposium will begin with the annual John Eleen lecture by Arun Kundnani. Arun Kundnani is the author of What is Antiracism? (Verso, 2023), The Muslims are Coming! (Verso, 2014) and The End of Tolerance (Pluto, 2007). Born in London, he moved to New York in 2010 and now lives in Philadelphia. A former editor of the journal Race & Class, he is currently working on a biography of Jamil Al-Amin. The lecture will be on Thursday February 20, 2025 (9:00 am to 10:30 am).
We welcome submissions from graduate students and postdoctoral fellows on current topics in the study of work and labour. We will also accept up to 5 submissions from upper-year undergraduate students from York University’s Work & Labour Studies program. Our goal is to motivate new conversations on methodological and theoretical approaches, with topics including (but not limited to):
- Inflation, wages, and class consciousness
- Climate action and environmental justice
- Artificial intelligence and platform technologies, and the future of work
- Self-determination and community organizing
- Precarity and the distribution of social risk
- Social and spatial divisions of reproductive labour and carework
- Queer, feminist, and intersectional approaches to labour studies
- Colonialism and decolonization, and work
- International divisions of labour, migration, and the social reproduction of inequality
- Labour in the so-called “Global South,” decentering western perspectives
- Work in informal economies
- Law, rights, regulation and governance
- Activist knowledge production
The symposium is designed to provide an interdisciplinary venue for students, post-doctoral fellows, and emerging academics to share their ideas and seek feedback in a collaborative and supportive environment. Submissions may include dissertation proposals or chapters, major research papers, or course papers. Participants are also encouraged to present on works in progress. In addition, symposium participants will be invited to submit their papers for consideration for publication to Workplace: a Journal for Academic Labor (Section: GLRC Symposia).
Professional workshop. We are excited to announce the inclusion of a special panel discussion at this year’s symposium, focusing on navigating the multifaceted world of academia. The invited panelists will explore the key aspects of academic life, including strategies for impactful research publication and career advancement. Additionally, we will discuss alternative career paths beyond academia, providing insights into leveraging academic skills in diverse professional settings. Whether you are a graduate student, an early career researcher, a seasoned academic, or someone considering opportunities outside the traditional academic path, this panel aims to offer valuable perspectives and practical advice to help you thrive in your chosen career.
Proposal Submissions
- The Symposium accepts proposals internationally.
- For Individual Papers submissions, please complete this form (you will need to provide a title, a 250-word abstract of the proposed presentation, and a short biography for individual presentations, including affiliation, current position, and research interests). Please indicate in the online form whether you can present (i) in-person, (ii) virtually, or (iii) either in-person or virtually. Sessions on February 20th will be in-person and sessions on February 21st will be virtual.
- For Panel proposals, please contact directly glrc.conf@gmail.com, providing a title and 250-word summary for the overall session, along with titles, abstracts, and bios for all session participants. Also indicate whether the panel can take place fully in-person or fully virtually (the hybrid format will not available).
- The deadline for submissions is December 8, 2024, by 11:59 pm ET.
- Participants will be notified of the status of their proposal by December 20, 2024.
For any inquiries, please email: glrc.conf@gmail.com.
Registration
Registration is free for all attendees and presenters.
Honorarium
Presenters will receive an honorarium of $100 for their participation.
Publication of papers presented at the Symposium
Following the Symposium, participants will be invited will be invited to submit their papers for consideration for publication to Workplace: a Journal for Academic Labor (Section: GLRC Symposia). Workplace is a refereed, open access journal published by the Institute for Critical Education Studies (ICES). Authors will receive a small honorarium following publication.