4th SOSS Research Conference- Transitions, Transformations, and Transdiciplinarity: Doing Social Sciences in the Time of Disruptions and Accelerating Planetary Changes

The School of Social Sciences held its 4th Research Conference from 18 to 20 April 2022. An annual event, the conference is a venue for researchers and research groups to present their studies and data on current and emerging issues in our societies. This year's theme focused on transitions, transformations, and the transdisciplinarity of doing social sciences in a time of disruptions and accelerating planetary changes. Change has been regarded as the one constant phenomenon underpinning social processes in the social sciences. However, the speed, depth, and breadth by which change unfolds in recent times have been unsettling chains of relations at a planetary scale and across spheres of living, challenging the social sciences to act, think, and offer new paradigms of understanding. Moreover, the post-pandemic world, coupled with the widening gulf of inequality within an altered biosphere, poses new challenges to communities and how to think about them scientifically. 

Transdisciplinary interconnections of knowledge and profound human experience and responses to changing ecosystems, biospheres, and geographies offer an analysis of social process and rethinking in an era of global, translocal disruption and alteration. Doing so will allow for a better exploration of measures and improvements. It will identify workable solutions that will help bring societies closer through sophisticated means of forging solidarities, technological innovations, and trading connections and unravel the forces that divide humanity along political, social, ethnic, religious, and economic lines. The social sciences and associated communities of practice are called upon to understand better the causes, processes, undercurrents, and consequences of global crises and their impact on the human condition, especially in and across the localities of the Global South. At this year's Research Conference, ten panels with 43 presented reports on current research were directed towards these challenges and their questions.

Dr Czarina Saloma-Akpedonu, the school's dean, opened the conference by welcoming the presenters and participants and introducing the conference's theme and the growing relevance and urgency of research in the Social Sciences at this time of disruptions and accelerating planetary changes. 

The first day of the conference focused on the theme 'Learning Lessons from the Pandemic to Strengthen Our Networks.’ There were three sessions, with each session doing paper presentations:

Lessons from the Institute of Philippine Culture (IPC) Experiences during the COVID-19 Pandemic 

John Paolo Dalupang (IPC)-moderator

Scalable and Sustainable COVID-19 Adaptations Through the Lens of Social Sciences”

Jessica Sandra R Claudio- moderator

Work During Covid-19

Rae Mark S Zantua- moderator

Dr Brenda SA Yeoh, FBA (National University of Singapore), delivered the keynote address. Yeoh made fundamental contributions to the field of migration and transnationalism studies. She was awarded the 2021 Vautrin Lud Award for outstanding achievements in Geography, the highest award in the area. 

In her keynote lecture, Yeoh tackled the Migration Regimes and Transnational Families in Times of Transition and Crisis. She argued that the ever-shifting regulatory practices that govern entry into a nation's territory call for a new understanding of mobility in a geopolitical context of increasing securitization, where movement across borders is not necessarily smooth or easy. While national borders are becoming more closed off for some groups of people, others are conditionally and exclusively selected for entry. This has led migration scholars to think about 'mobility regimes' to encapsulate the complex modes of differentiation within governing structures of mobility. Yeoh pointed out that the increasingly stringent mobility regimes negatively impact migrants or prospective migrants and their transnational family members living across nation-state boundaries, particularly in the wake of the ongoing pandemic.

Day 2 discussed "The Academe in Real World Complexities and Conundrums" and featured four panels and paper presentations:

Invisible Hazards: A Case Study of Air Pollution Impacts on Jeepney Drivers

Maria Theresa Joy G Rocamora- moderator

Issues in Education in a World of Wicked Problems

Mark Anthony D Abenir-moderator

Structural and Trade Reforms for the Post-Pandemic Recovery

Leonardo A Lanzona- moderator

What's New in the Past? 

Alfred Pawlik- moderator

The final day worked on the theme “Communities in Worlds Both Real and Digital” and featured three sessions and paper presentations:

Change and Crisis, The New Constants: Labour, Demographic and Political Shifts in the Philippines

Jayvy Gamboa- moderator

Disentangling and Interrogating Empowerment

Jozon A Lorenzana-moderator

Like with the 3rd SOSS Research Conference in October 2020, the 4th SOSS Research Conference was also held online.

Despite fears of "online fatigue" after 2 years in lockdown and countless online meetings, the 4th SOSS Research Conference proved to be a success with attractive panel topics and interesting and well-prepared presentations that were consistently well attended, both live in Zoom and on the School of Social Sciences' social media platforms. The fact that so many researchers were able to conduct and present excellent and meaningful research despite the pandemic makes us hopeful for the post-pandemic future, which we hope will also bring more peace, justice, and equality.

The success and smooth running of the conference is especially due to the Conference Technical Team of Beatriz C Beato, Jaztine A Calderon, Jessica Sandra R Claudio, and the Office of the Dean with Amy De Pano and Maraper A Sevilla who navigated the SOSS Research Conference with great skill and a steady hand.

I would also like to thank the organizers of the previous SOSS Research Conferences, Enrique Nino P Leviste and Joselito T Sescon, who lent their invaluable experience and advice to this year's conference and were always available. I am grateful to the SOSS Research Council composed of Dennis B Batangan, Nico A Canoy, Jozon A Lorenzana, Inez Z Ponce de Leon, and Majah Leah V Ravago, who thoroughly reviewed the submitted panel and paper proposals. Extra thanks are due to Inez Z Ponce de Leon who also took care of organizing the panels for the submitted individual contributions and created not only the excellent and appropriate titles for these panels but also the daily conference themes. Thanks go to the editors of the SOSS journals Global Transformations and Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints, Jose Jowel P Canuday and Filomeno V Aguilar Jr. for their support of the conference. Thanks are also due to Bobby Timonera, the MindaNews photo editor, who kindly gave us access to its photo database and allowed us to create our conference poster from the available images.

A big thank you goes to our keynote speaker, Brenda Yeoh, who kindly shared with us her extensive knowledge and expertise in her wonderful keynote address. And of course, we thank the patron of the 4th SOSS Research Conference and Dean of the School of Social Sciences, Czarina "Bopeep" Saloma-Akpedonu, who not only provided to the success of the conference with her experience and overview but was also an example and incentive for all of us with her commitment, her wealth of ideas and her enthusiasm for this conference. Finally, our heartfelt thanks go to the panel moderators and presenters who provided us with their exciting and exemplary research and a multitude of relevant content and results. 

See you all next year at the 5th SOSS Research Conference!

Visit the conference website. 

Read the book of abstracts.