Save the date for the next Working-Class Studies Association conference.. in Sydney, Australia! Thank you Dr. Sarah Attfield! Here’s a blurb about it. More to come next month!

The Working-Class Studies Association 2025 Conference: “Class and Social Justice“

When? December 2-5, 2025

Where? University of Technology Sydney, Australia

Description: The University of Technology Sydney (UTS) has a proud tradition of supporting social justice, which is articulated through a social impact framework focusing on social justice outcomes. The University strives to ‘contribute to a healthy, sustainable, and socially just society’ and to improve equity for social groups. There is commitment to ‘positively influence and impact the public, individual, and systemic forces that shape justice’. These stated aims make UTS a fitting venue for the 2025 annual conference of the Working-Class Studies Assocation.

Scholars, writers and activists working in the field of working-class studies are acutely aware of the role class plays in creating and reinforcing inequality and believe that an understanding of class is crucial when fighting for social justice. This conference will bring together scholars, activists and others who are interested in class, the lives of working-class people, and in creating a more just society.

Suggested Themes for Presentations & Panels

• Class and Indigenous experience
• Social justice activism
• Class and education
• Work, unemployment and class
• Union activism
• Class cultures and identities
• Working-class health
• Class and housing
• Class and its intersections

Acknowledgement of Country

UTS acknowledges the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, the Boorooberongal people of the Dharug Nation, the Bidiagal people and the Gamaygal people, upon whose ancestral lands our university stands. We would also like to pay respect to the Elders both past and present, acknowledging them as the traditional custodians of knowledge for these lands.

Dates to Remember

Keep an eye out for the Call for Presentations (CFP) in August 2024. It will be sent to WCSA members through their emails on file, and posted on our social media channels. Submissions will close in November 2024.

Participation and Funding

WCSA has a small pot of funds to which presenters can apply through its Young Scholars and Activists Fellowship and its Travel grant. Information on these will be included with the CFP. As an international association, some of our members located in Australia and in areas near it will have their first opportunity to participate with less economic and time-change stress. We will also have a Zoom track. Here’s to internationalism and solidarity!

*Photo: Bernice Melis, Sydney, Australia, Unsplash.