Call for Papers: ENDURE Workshops
The Utility of Resilience Frameworks for Examining COVID-19 Outcomes and Societal Transformations in the COVID-19 Period
13-14 March 2025, University of Campinas, Brazil
The ENDURE project invites scholars to participate in two workshops exploring the multifaceted impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. These workshops aim to foster interdisciplinary dialogue, promote comparative analysis, and contribute to a deeper understanding of societal resilience and transformation. The workshops will take place in a hybrid format at the University of Campinas, Brazil on 13-14 March 2025. Each of the workshops will result in an edited book or a special issue of a journal.
Workshop I: The Utility of Resilience Frameworks for Examining COVID-19 Outcomes
Resilience is increasingly analyzed, applied, and theorized from a host of disciplines and domains. This workshop invites papers that examine the application of resilience frameworks to understand the impact of COVID-19 on various societal domains. Themes and regions studied are open, but we would particularly be interested in studies of:
- Organizational resilience (states, communities, businesses, IGOs)
- Interconnections between resilience, resistance, and adaptability
- Individual resilience
- Democratic resilience
- The resilience of the international economic order
Workshop II: Societal Transformations in the COVID-19 Period
This workshop seeks papers that explore how societies, and state-society relations have changed during and after the pandemic. Topics may include:
- The interplay between top-down governance and bottom-up social movements
- The impact of the pandemic on daily life, work, and social structures
- The emergence of new social and political dynamics
Submission Guidelines:
- Abstract Submission: Please submit a 300-word abstract by January 31, 2025 using the submission form: https://forms.gle/14uPcjdyVvJHYgdg9
- Paper Presentations: Selected participants will be notified by February 7, 2025.
- Extended Abstracts: Please submit a 2000-3000-word extended abstract by March 7, 2025.
Participation:
There is no participation fee. Lunches and refreshments will be provided. Participants are responsible for arranging their own travel and accommodation.
We encourage scholars from diverse backgrounds to submit proposals. Please direct any inquiries about Workshop II to Eric Jones (Eric.C.Jones@uth.tmc.edu) or for Workshop I to Philippe Bourbeau (philippe.bourbeau@hec.ca).
ENDURE in a Nutshell
Covid-19 is a turning point in our common history, showing the vulnerability of our human life and the fragility of our social, economic and political systems. The most puzzling aspect for Social Science and Humanities research is to examine how Covid-19 – as a public health and systemic crisis – unfolded the way it did and to consider possibilities for post-pandemic transformations in their own complexity, uncertainty, contingency and context-specificity.
Governance responses to the Covid-19 pandemic differ from earlier emergencies, such as wars and economic crises, insofar as the state seeks not to mobilise to meet a common challenge (as with War, communism or the New Deal) but rather to demobilise economic activity, politics and society (lockdowns). This factor will likely impact on resistance to and resilience from existing social inequalities. Equally, the trend of (de)mobilisation has been uneven and marked by contestation. New forms of mobilisation, with widely varying ideological framings, emerged against the backdrop of global pandemic control and state-regulated lockdowns.
ENDURE combines methodologies drawing on historical, sociological, political science, media studies and cultural research to examine how state-led (de)mobilisation impacts on the drivers of inequality, in order to assess the prospects for greater post-pandemic equity. ENDURE will develop comparative, transatlantic perspectives on the uneven responses to the Covid-19 crisis and how this has impacted on inequality.
ENDURE will conduct research in Brazil, Germany, Colombia, UK, Canada, Finland, US, Croatia, Poland, Romania, and Turkey. The countries selected span the Atlantic and each were hit hard by the pandemic. They are critical places for exploring pandemic governance and for identifying best (and worst) policy practices.
