Dear Colleagues,

we hereby invite you to submit an abstract for the “3^rd International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Spatial Methods for Urban Sustainability” (“SMUS Conference”), which will simultaneously be the “3^rd RC33 Regional Conference Asia: India”, and take place on site at the Indian Institute for Technology Roorkee (IIT Roorkee, India) from Monday, February 20^th, to Sunday, February 26^th, 2023.

The deadline for submission of abstracts is October 13^th, 2022.

Please note that there are more than 75 fully funded travel scholarships for scholars from SMUS member institutions and other universities from the Global South. To check, if your university is a SMUS membership institution, please check: https://gcsmus.org/global-network/. If you are not sure that you will receive travel funding, please submit an abstract by the deadline – persons whose paper has been accepted will be informed about the procedure for application for travel funding after acceptance.

About the Conference

The “Global Center of Spatial Methods for Urban Sustainability” (GCSMUS or SMUS) together with the Research Committee on “Logic and Methodology in Sociology” (RC33) of the “International Sociology Association” (ISA) and the Research Network “Quantitative Methods” (RN21) of the European Sociology Association” (ESA) will organize a 3^rd International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Spatial Methods for Urban Sustainability (“SMUS Conference”), which will simultaneously be the “3^rd RC33 Regional Conference Asia: India”, and take place on site at the Indian Institute for Technology Roorkee (IIT Roorkee, India) from Monday, February 20^th, to Sunday, February 26^th, 2023. The six-day conference aims at continuing a global dialogue on methods and should attract methodologists from all over the world and all social and spatial sciences (e. g. anthropology, area studies, architecture, communication studies, computational sciences, digital humanities, educational sciences, geography, historical sciences, humanities, landscape planning, philosophy, psychology, sociology, urban design, urban planning, traffic planning and environmental planning). The conference programme will include keynotes, sessions and advanced methodological training courses. With this intention, we invite scholars of all social and spatial sciences and other scholars who are interested in methodological discussions to suggest an abstract to any sessions of the conference. All papers have to address a methodological problem.

Please find more information on the above institutions on the following websites:

• Global Center of Spatial Methods for Urban Sustainability (GCSMUS): https://gcsmus.org/
• ISA RC33: http://rc33.org/
• ESA RN21: www.europeansociology.org/research-networks/rn21-quantitative-methods
• IIT Roorkee: https://www.iitr.ac.in/

If you are interested in getting further information on the conference and other GCSMUS activities, please subscribe to the SMUS newsletter by registering via the following website:
https://lists.tu-berlin.de/mailman/listinfo/mes-smusnews

Conference Sessions:

1. Co-Production (of Knowledge) as Pathway to Decolonization of Knowledge in the Global South

2. Decolonizing Social Science Methodology

3. Fieldwork in the Global South – Shedding Light into the Black Box

4. Assessing the Quality of Survey Data

5. Comparing Social Survey Data Collected During a Global Crisis? The Uncertainty of Comparative Research

6. Culturally Sensitive Approaches – Potential New Directions of Empirical Research

7. Application of Quantitative Techniques in Spatial Analysis

8. Ethnography as Spatial-Temporal Method

9. Ethnographic Methods: Constructing Public Space

10. Visualizing Urban Nature: Ethnographic Approaches and Explorations

11. Multimodal Data Integration for Spatial Research

12. How Modality Matters? Learning from the Multiplicity of (Non-)Digital Discourse Analytical Approaches

13. Discourse Analysis, Historical Analysis and Biographical Research: Multi-Method Approaches in Interpretive Empirical Research

14. The Individual and the City: Urban Life Stories

15. Measuring Change in Urban Space(s)

16. The Longue Durée in the 21st-Century Social Sciences: Methodological Challenges of Analyzing Long-Term Social Processes

17. Design Methods for Accessibility and Social Inclusion

18. Applying Spatial Methods in Homelessness Studies: Methodological and Ethical Challenges

19. Analysing Hidden Forms of Violence and their Spatialities: The Methodological Challenges of the Research on Intimate Partner Violence and Sexualized Violence

20. Spatial Methods in Healthcare Research

21. Methods of Transnational Organisational and Economic Research

22. Methods for Studying the Spatial Dimension of Global Digital Infrastructures

23. Digitalization, Political Participation and Transformation in the Global South

24. Cross-Cultural Research Methods in Community-Oriented Approaches in Human Behavior

25. Spatial Methods in Transdisciplinarity for Urban Sustainability

26. Methodological Overlaps, Misunderstandings and Conflicts between Spatial Planning and Social Sciences

Submission of Abstracts

If you are interested in presenting a paper in any SMUS India 2023 session, please submit an English-language abstract containing the following information to SMUS India 2023 via the official conference website (https://forms.gle/cBfN9MCN3VzBRq3w6) until 13.10.2022.

• Mention the Session Number and Name
• Paper Title
• Speakers (= name(s), email address(es), institutional affiliation(s))
• 1,000-2,000 Word Abstract (= short description of the proposed talk. The abstract should explain which methodological problem is addressed, why this is relevant, how the paper refers to the session and what the general line of argument will be.)
• Only one submission per individual will be entertained

Please note that all sessions must adhere to the rules of session organization comprised in the RC33 statutes and GCSMUS Objectives (see below). Please note that you can give a maximum of two papers at the conference, including joint papers. The conference organizers will inform you if your proposed paper has been accepted for presentation at the conference. For further information, please see the conference website or contact the session organizers.

Please also kindly forward this call to anybody to whom it might be of interest.

Best wishes,

Program Chair

Gaurav Raheja Nina Baur

Convener, SMUS 2023 &                                  SMUS Director & RC33 Past President

SMUS India Lead Partner                                 Technische Universität Berlin               

IIT Roorkee                                                      IIT Roorkee

India                                                                Germany

Shubhajit Sadhukhan Manish Kumar Asthana

Co-Convener, SMUS 2023                               Co-Convener, SMUS 2023

Department of Architecture & Planning              Department of Humanities & Social Sciences

IIT Roorkee                                                      IIT Roorkee

India                                                                India

Rules for Session Organization

1. There will be no conference fees.
2. The session organizers and speakers will be expected to provide for their own funding for accommodation and travel expenses. However, members of SMUS partner institutions will be able to apply for a travel grant via their home institution. In addition, there will be travel grants for non-SMUS scholars from India who present a paper or organize a session. Travel grants will be high enough to fully cover travel costs and living expenses. Details on the application process will follow in autumn this year.
3. The conference language is English. All papers therefore need to be presented in English.
4. All sessions have to be international: Each session should have speakers from at least two countries (exceptions will need good reasons).
5. Each paper must contain a methodological problem (any area, qualitative or quantitative).
6. There will be several calls for abstracts via the SMUS, RC33 and RN21 Newsletters. To begin with, session organizers can prepare a call for abstracts on their own initiative, then at a different time, there will be a common call for abstracts, and session organizers can ask anybody to submit a paper.
7. SMUS, RC33 and RN21 members may distribute these calls via other channels. SMUS members and session organizers are expected to actively advertise their session in their respective scientific communities.
8. Speakers can only have one talk per session. This also applies for joint papers. It will not be possible for A and B to present at the same time one paper as B and A during the same session. This would just extend the time allocated to these speakers.
9. Session organizers may present a paper in their own session.
10. Sessions will have a length of 90 minutes with a maximum of 4 papers or a length of 120 minutes with a maximum of 6 papers. Session organizers can invite as many speakers as they like. The number of sessions depends on the number of papers submitted to each session: for example, if 12 good papers are submitted to a session, there will be two sessions with a length of 90 minutes each with 6 papers in each session.
11. Papers may only be rejected for the conference if they do not present a methodological problem (as stated above), are not in English or are somehow considered by session organizers as not being appropriate or relevant for the conference. Session organizers may ask authors to revise and resubmit their paper so that it fits these requirements. If session organizers do not wish to consider a paper submitted to their session, they should inform the author and forward the paper to the local organizing team who will find a session where the paper fits for presentation.
12. Papers directly addressed to the conference organising committee, suggesting a session. The conference organizers will check the formal rules and then offer the paper to the session organizer of the most appropriate session. The session organizers will have to decide on whether or not the paper can be included in their session(s). If the session organizers think that the paper does not fit into their session(s), the papers has to be sent back to the conference organizing committee as soon as possible so that the committee can offer the papers to another session organizer.