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Joint Interdisciplinary Graduate Conference 2021

Date: Time: 09:30 Location: on-campus, online of hybrid

On Thursday 17th and Friday 18th of June 2021, the Sociology department of Tilburg University organized the fourth Joint Interdisciplinary Graduate Conference, together with Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona), the University of Trento, and the Otto-Friedrich University (Bamberg) and with additional participation by PhD candidates from the universities in Aarhus, Leuven, and Milan. The conference included papers and posters on PhD projects within various topics, such as gender inequality, social mobility, welfare regimes, the digital world and urban issues.  

On Thursday morning, the conference was opened with a short speech by the rector magnificus of Tilburg University, Wim van de Donk. He emphasized the importance of interdisciplinary social science research in these times. Tim Reeskens (associate professor Tilburg University) followed with his keynote about ‘Values and Opinions in a pandemic: Dutch findings’. He discussed a multitude of research results relating to covid-19 which were captured by the ongoing European Values Study, for example about individual value change at different times in the pandemic, priority for vaccination and acceptance of vaccination passports. 

The day continued with two rounds of paper presentations, where PhD students presented their work and received comments from assigned reviewers. The organizing committee used the platform GatherTown to mimic a real conference feeling which was a great success. The platform allowed a fruitful setup for a round of poster presentations, where participants could walk by virtually and engage in real life discussions. 

On Friday, the day started with a keynote by Giuseppe Veltri (professor University of Trento) about big data opportunities in social science. This innovative topic was appreciated by attendants and garnered many interesting questions. Two rounds of paper presentations followed and the day was ended with virtual drinks. 

We would like to take this opportunity to thank all participants for their active participation in the conference. We enjoyed being able to organize this, despite the public health restrictions. 

 

Opening speech by Wim van de Donk & keynote by Tim Reeskens

Keynote by Giuseppe Veltri