Call for Papers

We welcome empirical, theoretical and methodological work from across the social sciences, including comparative and single-country studies, qualitative fieldwork, register-data analysis and computational approaches. Interdisciplinary submissions that would struggle to find a home in a single-discipline conference are particularly encouraged.

Submission types

Type	Length	Review	On the day
Full paper	6,000–8,000 words	Double-blind, two referees	20 min + 10 min discussion
Short paper / work in progress	3,000–4,000 words	Double-blind, two referees	15 min + 5 min
Poster	500-word abstract	Editorial screening	A1 portrait, Thursday session
Organised panel	Rationale + 4 abstracts	Reviewed as a set	90 min, chair provided by proposers
PhD colloquium	2,000-word summary	Committee selection	12 min + senior-scholar feedback
Methods workshop	Two-page proposal	Committee selection	3 hours, Friday afternoon

Important dates

All deadlines close at 23:59 Anywhere on Earth. The committee does not extend the abstract deadline; the full-paper deadline may move by one week if referee capacity requires it, and any change is announced by email.
Date	Milestone	Notes
1 September 2026	Submission portal opens	Account creation requires an ORCID iD
30 November 2026	Abstract deadline	250–300 words, one submission as presenting author
20 December 2026	Abstract decisions released	Accept, accept as poster, or decline
15 January 2027	Early-bird registration closes	Presenting authors must be registered to stay on the programme
6 February 2027	Full paper deadline	Optional; required for the proceedings
6 March 2027	Referee reports returned	Two reports per paper, with a revision window
20 March 2027	Camera-ready copy and standard registration close	Copyright licence signed at upload
27 March 2027	Final programme published	Session times, rooms and discussants confirmed
10 April 2027	Slide and poster upload closes	16:9 PDF; posters A1 portrait
14–16 April 2027	Conference	Woburn House, London, and online
30 June 2027	Special issue submissions due	By invitation after the conference
September 2027	Proceedings published	Open access, DOIs minted per paper

Formatting

Anonymised PDF or DOCX, A4, 12pt serif, 1.5 line spacing
APA 7th edition references throughout
Structured abstract of 250–300 words with up to five keywords
Tables and figures embedded, numbered, captioned above
No author names, affiliations or acknowledgements in the manuscript file
Self-citations written in the third person

Review and ethics

Every submission is read by two referees drawn from the 64-member review board
Disagreements go to the track chair, who may seek a third report
All manuscripts are screened with Turnitin; a similarity index above 20% is returned
Research on human participants must state its ethics approval body and reference
Generative-AI assistance must be declared in a short methods note
Papers presented at another conference in the same calendar year are not eligible

Publication

Proceedings published open access under CC BY 4.0, ISSN 2753-9041
A DOI is minted for each accepted paper via Crossref
Twelve papers are invited to the Journal of Comparative Social Policy special issue, submissions due 30 June 2027
Authors retain copyright; no transfer is required
Presenting authors may opt out of the proceedings and still appear on the programme

Prizes

Best Paper Prize

£750 and an invitation to the special issue. Judged on originality, evidence and clarity of argument by a panel of three track chairs.
Early Career Award

£500 for a sole-authored paper by a researcher within five years of the doctorate. Announced at the closing session on Friday.
Open Science Commendation

Recognises papers depositing data, code and pre-registration. Nominate by including your repository link at submission.