2026 Special Interest Organized Paper Sessions
The below Special Interest Organized Paper Sessions will be available for submission beginning August 1. You will find them in the submission listings on the MSS Submission Portal for the 2026 MSS Annual Meeting.
Addiction and the Social Body: Public Health, Policy, and Pathologization
Organizer: Rowland Edet, University of Nebraska - Lincoln
Description: This session centers on addiction as a multifaceted social and public health issue. Moving beyond individual pathology, we invite papers that examine addiction in relation to structural inequalities, stigma, governance, and resistance. Topics may include substance use, gambling, behavioral addictions, treatment systems, or the role of pharmaceutical and tech industries. We especially welcome critical and intersectional approaches that explore how addiction is constructed, managed, and lived within broader sociopolitical and cultural contexts.
Both/And: Joy and Pleasure amid Inequality and Oppression
Organizer: Jenny Pearson, Wichita State University
Description: Sociologists are increasingly turning their attention to joy and pleasure as important areas of critical inquiry. Highlighting the joy experienced within marginalized communities is a form of resistance as it seeks to celebrate identities often devalued in the broader society and motivates connection and activism. Papers in this session explore joy and pleasure as forms of celebration, resistance, and social connectedness.
Boundaries of Care: Inclusion and Exclusion
Organizer: Michael Haedicke, University of Maine
Description: Caring is relational. Saying “I care” implies a real or imagined connection between the speaker and the object of care, a sense that the welfare of the two are entwined. Saying “I don’t care” implies a break between subject and object, a sense of separate rather than shared fate. In these polarized and conflictual times, the question of how people draw boundaries that include or exclude other people (as well as nonhuman species) from relationships of care is urgent. This session will feature empirical and theoretical papers that explore boundary work in caring discourse and practice.
Care Work in Higher Education
Organizer: Michael Haedicke, University of Maine
Description: How do students, faculty, and staff practice care in today’s colleges and universities? How does self- and other-directed care work challenge – or reinforce – educational inequalities between social groups? How can and should higher education institutions change to support the necessary care work that their members do? This session will illuminate diverse forms and impacts of care in colleges and universities and will explore how care work intersects with ongoing disruption and uncertainty in higher education.
Exploring Meaning-making around the Sacred
Organizer: Karen Bradley, University of Central Missouri
Description: This session is focused on the way contemporary approaches to meaning-making are using the Sacred realm as a centering pole. Language of religion, the spiritual, the Unknown as well as rethinking the non-religious or the secular extends these conversations in many directions. The session hopes to explore and engage in dialogue about possible intersections considering how the holy is made new and the new is made holy in contemporary society.
FGWC Experiences and Outcomes
Organizer: Nicole Oehmen, Shenandoah University
Description: The proposed regular paper session encapsulates topical research on those who are the first in their families to attend college and/or come from working-class backgrounds (hereafter, FGWC). The session is open to empirical explorations of experiences and/or outcomes of FGWC folks in any stage of post-secondary education, including decision-making processes with regard to attending college, or any path following degree matriculation. Depending on the volume of paper proposals received, the session may be split into thematically similar regular paper sessions.
Health Professions and Institutions – Training, Entry, and Work Environments in Healthcare and Public Health
Organizer: Judson Everitt, Loyola University Chicago
Description: Healthcare professions and institutions are dealing with great uncertainty in the delivery of care and support for public health. In this session, we seek to feature research on health professions and institutions broadly conceived – health professions education, health professions work environments, inequalities in the delivery of care, shifts in institutional arrangements concerning access to medical care, shifts in policy concerning public health, and the impact of current work environments on health professionals’ mental health are all welcome topics.
Housing as Care: Rethinking Shelter Through Relationships
Organizer: Erin Gaede, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Description: This session explores housing as a deeply relational practice—one that is shaped by and shapes networks of care, kinship, and obligation. Rather than viewing housing solely as a commodity or policy issue, we invite papers that examine how people create, maintain, and contest housing through interpersonal and institutional relationships. From multigenerational households and informal caregiving arrangements to tenant unions and mutual aid housing networks, housing is a site where care is negotiated, extended, and sometimes withheld. We are especially interested in work that highlights how housing practices reflect broader dynamics of race, gender, class, and migration, and how care is both a resource and a burden within these contexts. This session aims to foreground the social life of shelter, asking how housing arrangements sustain or strain relationships, and how sociologists can engage with housing as a terrain of both vulnerability and collective resilience.
Incubators of Care: Games, Gatherings, and Guided Encounters
Organizer: Michael O. Johnston, William Penn University
Description: This session invites papers that explore incubators of care. These are immersive environments where care is intentionally cultivated, practiced, and performed. These may include online video games, role-playing games, escape rooms, weekend retreats, and other structured gatherings that experiment with care as a relational and ethical practice. We welcome research on how these spaces foster empathy, solidarity, or moral reflection, as well as how they navigate tensions around inclusion, labor, or design. Submissions should consider the social, emotional, and symbolic dimensions of care in these incubated contexts.
Inequalities in the Academy
Organizer: Jackie Hogan, Bradley University
Description: Recent attacks on programs designed to address issues of equity within higher education necessitate a closer examination of patterns of inequality within the academy. This session invites papers that address intersectional inequalities among undergraduate and graduate students, for instance in terms of access, retention, and disciplinary representation; or among faculty, staff, and administrators, for instance in terms of recruitment, advancement, salary, workload, and work-life issues.
Quantitative Criminology
Organizer: Aaron Puhrmann, Grand View University
Description: This session invites papers that apply quantitative methods to questions in the field of criminology and criminal justice. Submission topics are wide-open within the realm of quantitative criminology and criminal justice. Whether you are presenting the latest cutting-edge quantitative methods or replicating a study, you are welcome. Want to practice presenting your thesis or dissertation research in criminology/criminal justice? You are welcome. This session is open to all kinds of topics such as mapping hot spots, testing a new theory of police use of force, examining your theory of choice to shed light on crime patterns, criminal behavior, victimization, etc. We welcome quantitative submissions of just about anything we as sociologists can use to deepen our understanding of crime and justice in contemporary society.
SICSS in Action - Projects from Summer Institutes in Computation Social Science!
Organizer: Lai Sze Tso, Gustavus Adolphus College
Description: Since 2017, Summer Institutes in Computational Social Science (SICSS.io) programs have brought together social and data scientists from around the globe to develop interdisciplinary computational approaches to address complex social issues in an open-source setting. Presently, there are over 1200 young scholars who have participated in SICSS. In 2025, SICSS - Minnesota was one of 26 international partner sites, kickstarting its inaugural program (https://sicss.io/2025/minnesota/). At MSS 2026, SICSS-MN aims to host a Special Interest Organized Session to provide a platform for SICSS-MN and SICSS alum from any SICSS location to showcase computation projects, to discuss grant development and project progression, and to brainstorm next steps in the collective CSS endeavor. Papers submitted to this session ideally draw from skills, data, codes, projects, and content developed by (former/current) participants of SICSS programs.
Who Cares? The Building Blocks for Communities of Care
Organizer: Michael O. Johnston, William Penn University
Description: This session invites papers that explore how communities of care take shape at the group, neighborhood, and city levels—both in-person and online. We welcome research on mutual aid networks, caregiving collectives, grassroots initiatives, and digital support spaces that position care as central to social connection and collective life. Submissions may address how care practices foster belonging, confront or reinforce inequality, and function as building blocks for sustainable communities. Papers should critically examine care’s relational, ethical, and structural dimensions in community formation.