The 11th Doctoral Conference, organised by the Communication and Society Research Centre (CECS) of the University of Minho, will be held on 4 and 5 December 2024 at the Gualtar campus in Braga. The organising committee is inviting PhD students and recent researchers (up to one year) in Communication Sciences, Cultural Studies, Sociology and Geography to submit a proposal reflecting on ‘Ethics in Social Sciences research’.
Society has been going through countless challenges and changes, arising not only from technological advances but also from the societal disruptions we are witnessing. The continuous expansion of new technologies and means of communication, the consolidation of social networks and the emergence of artificial intelligence tools are conditions that contribute to the permanent renewal of personal, professional and scientific routines. Aggravated by the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic and, at another level, the armed conflicts that have emerged in this decade, these transformational dynamics are happening at a speed that is often not compatible with taking ethical and deontological challenges into account. All this is happening in increasingly diverse social contexts, in which new subjectivities and identity categories emerge, associated with the broadening of the spectrum of genders and sexualities, for example, which we must explore from an intersectional perspective. On the other hand, spatial and social inequalities also create new contexts, both individual and organisational, in which intense competition strategies are developed.
From the economy to health, politics and education, the complexity of everyday practices has mobilised reflection that is increasingly sensitive to ethical commitment to others. Even scientific activity is now more attentive to ethics, both as an object of research and as a horizon for action. For this reason, this edition of the CECS Doctoral Conference accepts proposals from doctoral students who, based on their research work, reflect on one of the following topics:
– Information and ethics (disinformation phenomena; image rights; media coverage and conflict representation);
– Professional ethics;
– Social, economic and spatial inequalities, cultural diversity and human rights;
– Artificial intelligence, creativity and copyright;
– Science and ethics (the researcher’s position concerning the objects of study, care practices and the emotional and well-being dimensions; ethical conflicts based on issues of privacy and anonymity; plagiarism; dissemination and commitment to knowledge transfer);
– Other ethical issues in the Social Sciences.
The XI Doctoral Conferences aim to strengthen the research work carried out at CECS at doctoral level, providing spaces for dialogue and debate where participants can make new contributions to their project. They also aim to enable the exchange of experiences and constructive critical evaluation. The Conferences are open to everyone, although they especially invite the academic community linked to the fields of Social Sciences that make up the CECS. In addition to students, who are expected to participate actively and constructively, CECS researchers with work on the proposed themes, as well as those responsible for the scientific guidance of doctoral and post-doctoral projects, will contribute to the debate and critical scrutiny.
Each paper will be allocated 15 minutes, with 10 minutes for discussion and comments. Practical workshops on personal and professional skills relevant to the research process are also planned.
Abstracts of between 400 and 500 words and 3 to 5 keywords, signed by the students and their supervisors, should be sent in Word format to jornadascecs@ics.uminho.pt by 4 November. They must include in the body of the email, but not in the abstract, details of the personal identification and institutional affiliation of the proposer(s) and scientific advisor(s), as well as their email addresses.
All abstracts will be submitted to the scientific committee of the conference and classified according to their academic merit and relevance to the themes and objectives of the conference. Acceptance will be announced by 15 November.
The texts of the selected papers, formatted according to standards to be announced in due course, may be published in the proceedings or in the spaces defined for this on the different scientific platforms of the CECS.
At the same time, participants will also be able to submit a proposal to present the relevance of their work (in a flexible format: poster, video, video script, podcast, digital/computer application) to compete for the Impact Award, which aims to recognise the social and/or scientific relevance of a PhD project. In addition to the written support, which will be exhibited during the conference days, participants must prepare a 2-minute pitch to present to the prize jury at a specific moment in the programme.
For any further information, please contact: ritaaraujo@ics.uminho.pt