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Junior Sociologists

Laboratory for PhD Students in Sociology

Selected Participants

After a thorough evaluation based on academic merit and the application of diversity criteria to ensure a cohort representing a broad range of research areas, theoretical and methodological approaches, and global perspectives, the following students have been selected to participate in the XIX ISA International Laboratory for PhD Students, which will take place at Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Doha, Qatar, from November 28 to December 4, 2026.

Students

  1. Aamir ALI, Bielefeld University, Germany
  2. Areej ALSHAMMIRY, York University, Canada
  3. Nur Nadia BINTI LUKMANULHAKIM, University of Nottingham Malaysia, Malaysia
  4. Seng BU, Tampere Peace Research Institute (TAPRI), Tampere University, Finland
  5. Susmita DASH, Pondicherry University, India
  6. Jeehyun LEE, Chonnam National University, South Korea
  7. Amin MAJIDIFARD, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Iran
  8. Nerea MONTEJO, Scuola Normale Superiore, Italy
  9. Samantha Zanele MOYO, University of Cape Town, South Africa
  10. Yusuf MURTEZA, Marmara University, Türkiye
  11. Karolina NUGUMANOVA, Scuola Normale Superiore, Italy
  12. Orouba OTHMAN, Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Belgium; Birzeit University, Palestine
  13. Abdallah OUNOUR HASSAN OUNOUR, University of Urbino Carlo Bo, Italy; Bayreuth University, Germany
  14. Karim SAFIEDDINE, University of Pittsburgh, USA
  15. Melissa VILLEGAS QUISPE, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Perú
  16. Aokai YANG, The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

The selected participants will be contacted by email this week with detailed information about the next steps. As participation places must be confirmed within a specified timeframe, we encourage all selected candidates to monitor their email inboxes, including spam or junk folders, and respond promptly to any communication from the ISA Secretariat.

Call for Applications

The International Sociological Association invites early-career sociologists to participate in the 2026 edition of the ISA Annual PhD Laboratory. Since 2000, the ISA International Laboratory for PhD Students in Social Sciences has brought together doctoral students from across the globe. It remains a core initiative of the ISA to foster an inclusive and collaborative global sociological community. This year’s event will be hosted by the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies in Qatar, offering an opportunity for doctoral researchers from around the world to come together to share, reflect, and develop their work in an intensive week of exchange and mentoring.

The 2026 theme, "Global Orders, Intimate Struggles: Material Lives and the Micropolitics of Resistance," invites participants to explore how global structures of power are embedded in everyday life and how individuals and communities navigate, negotiate, and, at times, resist these forces. The laboratory invites participants undertaking sociological inquiries into how global orders - shaped by capitalism, colonial legacies, contemporary settler-colonial regimes, war-making and genocides, climate crisis, and migration governance are made material, lived and contested in ordinary settings.

Participants are encouraged to consider questions such as:

  • How do and bureaucratic systems, technologies, and infrastructures serve as everyday mechanisms of governance, and how do they reproduce or disrupt hierarchies of race, gender, class, and citizenship?
  • How do these global orders shape sociological research agendas on and in the Global South? And how have wars and genocides-from Sudan to the Congo, Myanmar, Syria, Gaza and Palestine-repeatedly unsettled these agendas and the conditions of knowledge production?
  • In what ways do global structures-such as migration regimes, development agendas, climate crisis, and securitization-materialize in local institutions like schools, clinics, homes, or places of worship?
  • How is social reproduction-care work, domestic labor, emotional labor-implicated in sustaining or contesting global political and economic orders?
  • What role do material culture and embodied practices (e.g., dress, documents, architecture) play in shaping visibility, legitimacy, or marginality in contested social landscapes?
  • What forms of agency and resistance emerge in constrained or ambiguous settings, and how can sociologists attend to micropolitics without losing sight of structural forces?

Participants will bring their own empirical work, unresolved analytical questions, or methodological challenges into dialogue with an international cohort. The laboratory is designed for PhD students in the middle stages of their doctoral research - those who have begun collecting or analyzing data and are engaging with theoretical or conceptual framing, especially through transnational, comparative, or multi-scalar approaches.

Logistical Information

  • No participation fee
  • Travel to Doha, accommodation, and meals during the Lab will be covered
  • Venue: Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Doha, Qatar
  • Organizer: Nazanin Shahrokni, ISA Executive Committee Member and Associate Professor of International Studies at Simon Fraser University (nazanin_shahrokni@sfu.ca)