Call for Papers: Cork Conference 2026

Social Pathologies: Developmental and Processual Perspectives on Contemporary Malaises

Papers are invited for a major international conference in University College Cork, Ireland, taking place on 2–5 December 2026. The conference theme is: Social Pathologies: Developmental and Processual Perspectives on Contemporary Malaises. This in-person conference is a joint endeavour between RC56, the Norbert Elias Foundation, University College Cork, and the Social Pathologies of Contemporary Civilization Research Network.

The conference will address the historical dynamics of social pathologies. It is concerned with disease in a broad sense, of disorders of development, function and structure, expressed in symptoms that indicate an underlying condition. These result in a lack of ease, or pathos – suffering. History is marked by concrete socially driven diseases, from plagues, to social epidemics of chronic conditions, addiction and mental health problems. There are also the discontents of civilisation –disorders such as melancholy, anxiety and insatiability that seem to be baked into social development. Social pathology is not limited narrowly to health and well-being, but rather to a wider spectrum of social problems such as violence, mass incarceration, injustice, exclusion, and failures to provide for people’s needs, that are
systemic and that produce social suffering. While social pathologies can be seen as concrete, where the suffering involved is all too real, its scale all too apparent, and the causal links to historically shaped political and social organisation all too clear, they can also be primarily symbolic. The social problems that are deemed pathological, are frequently political constructions, public dramas, or scapegoating exercises where behaviours and people once
considered unremarkable become pathologised as sick, infectious, subversive, and to be corrected. Thus, civilising offensives, projects of normalisation, the construction of folk devils and the secondary harms caused by these processes, are an equal concern of the conference. The antonym of malaise is comfort and well-being. Our topic can be understood
through its opposite, as much as through itself, so we welcome papers on health, flourishing and wholeness as well. 

Crucially, the goal is to challenge a-social and a-historical biomedical and psychological perspectives that view conditions and syndromes as individual cases, reducing issues to the body, psyche or the self, conceptualised in disconnected professional discourses, with individual treatments and forms of self-help. Rather, they are seen as rooted in collectively experienced conditions of historical development and social transformation, and their shape can only be adequately drawn through delineating their origins and processual nature.

We welcome in particular papers that combine an empirical focus, methodological sophistication and theoretical analysis. All schools of historical sociology are welcome, and we hope for fruitful exchanges and innovations in these. We list some suggested themes below, but the conference also welcomes papers more broadly concerning historical
sociology.

Suggested Themes / Sessions:

Abstracts of no more that 300 words should be submitted via this link by 15 May 2026.

A workshop for PhD students will take place on the 2 and 5 December, with participants in the workshop also participating as attendees or speakers at the conference in the two days in- between. Applicants to the workshop should apply via this link, including their name, affiliation, conference paper abstract should they be delivering a paper, PhD title and outline, and application for financial assistance should they be seeking this.

We have a small number of bursaries available. You can access our conference website through this link.

You can pose questions and enquiries about the conference to: information@socialpathologies2026.com

Conference Organising Committee:

 John O’Brien, University College Cork
 Gema Kloppe-Santamaria, University College Cork
 Jason Hughes, University of Leicester
 Paddy Dolan, Technological University Dublin
 Domonkos Sik, Eötvös Loránd University
 Kieran Keohane, University College Cork
 Marta Bucholc, University of Warsaw
 Lucy Císař Brown, Charles University Prague
 Robert Van Krieken, University of Sydney
 John Connolly, Dublin City University
 Stephen Mennell, University College Dublin