The 2025 conference season is coming to a close. Here’s a look back at where SCI members have been sharing their research and insights this year.

Text by Raka Mukherjee

Throughout this year’s conference season, SCI researchers took their work to international forums together reflect the core themes driving SCI’s research agenda.

How does turbulence become a testing ground for transformation

Luke Yates, whose research is focused on the politics and strategies of digital mobilization, presented two papers at the International Sociological Association Forum of Sociology in Rabat. His panels on Strategy in Collective Action and Platform Politics, co-organised with Kevin Gillan and Simin Fadaee, explored how movements creates strategy in uncertain terrains and how grassroots actors negotiate power within platform capitalism.

At SCORAI Europe 2025 in Lund, Steffen Hirth and Ulrike Ehgartner presented their research on turbulence in food systems. Their work on “Civil Food Resilience in a Turbulent World” and “Land Abuse Change: Regenerative Agriculture and the Question of Producing Meat Within Planetary Boundaries” examined how governance and responsibility evolve within complex ecological transitions.

Sönke Mestwerdt’s research on entrepreneurship across the Global South was presented at several conferences. In Mexico City, his paper “Pitch Perfect: Emotional Appeals and Lender Decision-Making in Social Entrepreneurship” won the Best Empirical Paper Award at the 21st Annual Social Entrepreneurship Conference. He continued with “How Do Social Entrepreneurs Form Social Opportunity Beliefs?” at BCERC in Boston and “Everything, Everywhere, Agentic All at Once” at Montréal’s All Aboard Entrepreneur-Ship workshop, where he also received mentoring and feedback from senior scholars. At AOM 2025 in Copenhagen, he delivered multiple papers — including “The Role of Informal Reference Points in New Venture Decision-Making” and “Bringing the ‘Social’ Back into Social Entrepreneurship Studies”. He also co-organised a Professional Development Workshop titled “Measuring What Matters: Entrepreneurial Value Creation Through Impact Measurement and Management.”

How do crises invite new imaginaries 

At the European Sociological Association Consumption Research Network Conference in Prague, Dan Welch presented “Consumer Society and the Crisis of the Democratic Imaginary,” tracing how post-war ideals of prosperity have fractured since the financial crisis. At SCORAI Europe, he shared results from the international collaboration IMAGINE, which explored how cultural imaginaries shape societal responses to sustainability challenges across food, clothing, and mobility. Earlier, at the BSA Conference in Manchester, he joined the Culture Stream Plenary to discuss where the sociology of consumption might go next.

Helen Holmes at SCORAI approached crisis through the lens of decay, presenting “Circular Consumption and the Social and Cultural Practices of Decay.” Helen’s research reframes decay not as an ending, but as a quiet transformation within circular consumption. It is a reminder that renewal often begins where we least expect it. 

James Jackson’s contributions spanned the architecture of financial and political crisis. At the EISA Conference in Bologna, he presented Green Financial Planning and Central Bank Independence in the Context of Climate Change. At the PSA Conference in Birmingham, his co-authored paper “Historicising the De-Risking State” traced centuries-old entanglements of state, capital, and climate governance. Later in the year, speaking at the Westminster Employment Forum Policy Conference, he explored how funding priorities for green industries and the National Wealth Fund might steer markets toward sustainable transformation, while balancing innovation and systemic risk.

How can disruption become an opportunity 

At the International Studies Association Conference in Chicago, the Green Energy Transitions and Societies (GETS) team – Sandra Barragán, James Jackson, Mat Paterson, and Silke Trommer, organised two linked panels exploring disruption in global energy transitions. Their sessions drew together new research on trade governance, green finance, and policy change to shape a dialogue on how disruption acts as both challenge and opportunity in the path to decarbonisation.

In Lisbon, Mike Hodson presented at the International Sustainability Transitions Conference on “Three Challenges of Theorising the Urban.” His talk envisioned cities as living systems that function as dynamic spaces where sustainability transitions and social disruption converge.  

SCI’s postgraduate researchers, Tetyana Solovey, Anowyesha Dash and Topo Mokokwane, presented their work-in-progress at recent conferences. At the BSA Conference, Solovey presented an upcycled textile poster illustrating her research on the remaking of clothes. It reflects on making as both a potential pathway for sustainable fashion and a method of doing research. Dash shared her research on circular business models in the seafood sector at the IABS Conference in Maastricht, contributing to broader debates on sustainability and innovation across global supply chains. Topo Mokokwane was selected to participate in the European Sociological Association Annual PhD Summer School at the Università degli Studi di Palermo in Italy. This year’s theme was Minorities & Marginalities. Topo was accepted due to his innovative approach to this topic through the lens of environmental sustainability. 

In summary, the 2025 conference season highlighted how uncertainty and crisis can be navigated and leveraged to drive more equitable and sustainable futures.  

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