Matchmaking Session at Socin 2026: Call for Collaborations
Submission deadline: June 20, 2026. Submission form coming soon!
Are you looking for project partners who, like you, are interested in building international partnerships and developing innovative social, research, and technological initiatives? Here is your chance to meet them at the SOCIN 2026 Conference!
Don't miss this unique opportunity to attend a special networking session “Call for Collaborations”, organized by SWPS University and the European Reform Univeristy Alliance (ERUA). The event will take the form of a moderated matchmaking session designed to connect researchers with academic partners, local governments, NGOs, and business stakeholders to address shared societal challenges and develop projects with implementation potential.
The meetings are expected to foster long-term consortia, drive the development of projects with tangible social and economic impact, and initiate collaborations that lead to joint grant applications, pilot projects, and practical implementations.
We welcome projects from a range of academic fields: social sciences, economics, psychology, as well as those from the natural sciences that seek collaboration with researchers from other disciplines.
The proposed projects should fall within the field of social innovation and address contemporary social challenges, for example:
Submission themes
1. Institutions in Transition: Learning, Unlearning, and Systemic Change
Which dimensions of formal and informal institutions manifest social innovation?
- Local institutions as laboratories of change
- Innovation in the public sector
- Trust in institutions as a democratic resource
- Participation, co-governance, commons
- Public policies as learning processes rather than one-off reforms
- Diffusion and scaling of change
- Deliberative democracy
- Local institutional innovations
2. Technology for Social Transformation: Between Empowerment and Control
How to design and implement technologies that enhance human and ecological well-being? Potential topics include:
- Civic tech and participatory platforms
- AI in social services, education, and the labor market
- Technologies reducing environmental impact
- Social consequences of technological development and solutions
- Disinformation and credibility
3. Everyday Life as a Space for of Change: New Practices, Beliefs, and Rituals
Everyday life as a sphere of practice, emergence of norms, decision-making, and change-oriented activity:
- Sharing economy and circularity
- Consumerism and the pressure of cultural norms
- Urban and rural grassroots initiatives as laboratories of social change
- New communities of solidarity, support, and interconnected needs
- Mobility, remote work, new rhythms of life
- Dialogue across divisions
- Future skills: from care and tenderness to critical thinking, resilience, and cooperation
- Interculturality, migration, and local integration
4. Place, Infrastructure, and Virtual Spaces: Spheres Where Change Happens
How spatial layouts and infrastructure shape social relations, social innovation, and a sense of belonging. Potential topics include:
- Architecture, urban planning, and design as tools for shaping well- being
- New forms of housing and living infrastructure
- Smart city as social infrastructure
- Architecture of virtual spaces supporting social innovation
5. Social Imaginaries, Narratives, and Paradigms: Reaffirming Futures
Potential topics include:
- New paradigms: regenerativity, resilience, posthumanism, planetary thinking, degrowth, deliberative and participatory democracy
- Interregnum, uncertainty, and crisis of meaning in social theory
- Ethics of care, relationality, and the commons
- The role of narratives, symbols, metaphors, and aesthetics in social change
6. Impact-Oriented Organizations: Beyond Metrics and Towards Action
Organizations as designers of social life conditions. Potential topics include:
- Social enterprises, B Corps, and the mission-driven economy
- Action rather than reporting within ESG strategies
- Impact measurement and its political consequences
- Cross-sector collaboration
- New models of leadership and organizational culture that generate impact
- Cross-sector engagement in creating social innovations
7. Mental Resilience and Collective Well-being in an Age of Polycrisis
Well-being as infrastructure for agency, not a private issue. Potential topics include:
- Shifting societal needs
- Burnout in the social sector and education
- Community-based support models
- Impact of urbanization and technology on individual and social wellbeing
- Innovations in the field of neurodiversity
8. Trickster Perspectives on Social Innovation: Things and Phenomena that Hinder, Bend, and Neutralize Change
Critical reflection on what blocks change or neutralizes the impact of social innovation. Potential topics include:
- Narratives of fear vs. building social awareness
- Escalation of international conflicts
- Ecological consequences of warfare
- Techno-solutionism
- Participation without power
- Social impact as marketing
- Smart city as a narrative of control
- Ecological and social consequences of technological development
Submission deadline: June 20, 2026 by midnight (CEST)
