9th International Community, Work & Family Conference
WELCOME!
The 9th International Community, Work and Family Conference will take place on 15-17 June 2023 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil with the theme: Inclusive Community, Work and Family: Imagining Global Futures through Local Contexts. The event is hosted by Middlesex University London and the Coppead Graduate School of Business (Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro). It will take place in the heart of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil at the Pestana Rio Atlântica Hotel in Copacabana.
The conference will bring together our global multidisciplinary community of scholars and practitioners to contribute to debates on the community, work and family fields and to stimulate further research towards a more inclusive future. The conference will also provide ample opportunities for networking. A pre-conference doctoral workshop will be held as a full-day event on June 14 at the Coppead Graduate School of Business. The morning session will focus on topics relevant for research students and the afternoon session will provide students with an opportunity to present their work and receive feedback.
Community, work and family are interconnected and central in many people´s lives; however, experiences of community, work and family vary greatly across diverse and changing contexts. The focus on inclusivity invites us to harness the power of diversity, to embrace the complexity of intersectionalities, and to question dominant approaches in the community-work-family interface.
This conference offers the opportunity to engage in learning and knowledge creation in new ways, which include a range of realities and experiences in work and family life. As a community of scholars and practitioners, we welcome reflections on how we might collectively build on our expertise and local knowledge to (re-)imagine avenues to reduce inequalities, explorations of how we might foster the potential to collaborate across current boundaries to facilitate knowledge exchange and capacity building, and ultimately work toward a more inclusive future. We hope to build on our own diversity in innovative and purposeful ways, focusing on improvements in health and wellbeing, inclusive socio-economic development, and the sustainability of communities.
Abstracts can be submitted across a range of themes. Papers dealing with themes and issues in the field of community, work and family not mentioned below are also welcome. Please note that we are happy to accept submissions in English, Portuguese or Spanish.
For more details, please visit the other sections on this website or contact 2023icwf@gmail.com.
Conference location
This is the first CWF Conference held in Latin America, a region that has a rich and complex history. Latin America is known for its cultural diversity, blending indigenous, European, African and Asian people languages and traditions. Rio de Janeiro, the cultural capital of Brazil and possibly its most famous portrait, is widely known for its natural features. The second largest city in Brazil, Rio de Janeiro is a metropolis that is uniquely ethnically diverse and offers an ideal space to discuss the challenges and opportunities that individuals, families and communities face in life and work. In this call for papers, we echo two prominent Latin American figures – Brazilian educator Paulo Freire and Colombian sociologist Orlando Fals Borda. From Freire, we are reminded of the importance of knowledge and learning (and hope) to empower individuals and communities and help shape the present and the future. From Fals Borda and his speech in 1995, we are reminded of the role of research in supporting a social justice agenda. Below, we borrow his words to demonstrate an inclusive approach to research that could be equally applied to other aspects of life and work.
"Do not monopolise your knowledge nor impose arrogantly your technique, but respect and combine your skills with the knowledge of the researched or grassroots communities, taking them as full partners and co-researchers. Do not trust elitist versions of history and science which respond to dominant interests, but be receptive to counter-narratives and try to recapture them. Do not depend solely on your culture to interpret facts, but recover local values, traits, beliefs, and arts for action by and with the research organizations. Do not impose your own ponderous scientific style for communicating results, but diffuse and share what you have learned together with the people, in a manner that is wholly understandable and even literary and pleasant, for science should not be necessarily a mystery nor a monopoly of experts and intellectuals" (Orlando Fals Borda).