Call for Papers: Collisions, Coalitions and Riotous Subjects: The Riots one year on. A one-day conference

***New speakers added***

Over the past year, academics have brought critical perspectives to bear on the complex causes and consequences of the English riots of 2011. These interventions have unsettled the easy answers offered by politicians and the police. Important questions have been raised about the relationship between the riots and the increasingly hostile conditions of neoliberalism and Coalition policies, including: growing unemployment, rising tuition fees, the withdrawal of the EMA, cuts to Sure Start and an overhaul of welfare provision. On the 28th September 2012, The Weeks Centre for Social and Policy Research (London South Bank University) – in collaboration with the Institute for Policy Studies in Education (London Metropolitan University) – will host a one-day conference designed to interrogate the relationship between the Riots and re-shaped inequalities of race, class, place, gender, sexuality in a post-crash, austerity era. As we see protests and uprisings across Europe and beyond, this will be a moment to reflect more widely on the convulsions of contemporary capitalism.

The day will include plenary panels of guest speakers from across academia and public and political life, and a series of academic papers. Confirmed speakers include: Professor Les Back (Goldsmiths College); Professor Valerie Hey (University of Sussex), Professor Val Gillies (Weeks Centre for Social and Policy Research); Owen Jones (author of Chavs: The demonization of the working-class); Dr Lisa McKenzie (University of Nottingham); Ojeaku Nwabuzo (The Runnymede Trust); Dr Clifford Stott (Aarhus University, Denmark; co-author of Mad Mobs and Englishmen? Myths and Realities of the Riots 2011); Daniel Silver (Salford Social Action and Research Foundation); Gillian Slovo (Playwright, 'The Riots') and Tracey Gore (Director of the Steve Biko Housing Assoc., Liverpool). Attendees are invited to the evening book launch for ‘Educational Diversities’ (Palgrave, Edited by Yvette Taylor).

We welcome contributions from across the career stage and from a range of disciplines including sociology, media studies, geography, education, cultural studies and criminology. We are interested in traditional presentations, posters and other innovative formats.

Abstracts are invited on themes including but not limited to:

· Encounters, exclusions and (dis)contents in regenerated city spaces

· Families, ‘parental responsibility’ and welfare regimes

· Youth, educational aspirations and work futures in an age of austerity

· Policing, Stop and Search and race relations· Gendering the ‘rioters’

· Coalition policy responses to the riots 

· Sexual subjects: normativities and disruptions

Please submit proposed abstracts of up to 250 words (with contact details) to: abstracts.riotsconference(a)gmail.com Please save your abstracts with author name followed by Riots_2012. (e.g. Smith_Riots_2012). The deadline for submissions is Tuesday 5th June 2012.For more information please contact the organisers, Professor Yvette Taylor (Weeks Centre for Social and Policy Research), Dr Kim Allen, Sumi Hollingworth and Ayo Mansaray (London Metropolitan University) at enquiries.riotsconference(a)gmail.com Registration £75. Registration will be open shortly on the LSBU website. For updates you can also join our Facebook page. There are funded places for eight postgraduate students: four kindly sponsored by the Gender and Education Association and four by the British Sociological Association Youth Study Group for students studying in the areas of gender/ education and youth respectively. Please indicate if and why you would like to be considered for funding on your abstract.