Message from the President
Dr. Liam Swiss, Acadia University
Canadian Sociological Association President 2024-2025
All the syllabi have been distributed, the graduate students oriented, and the submit button has been pressed on those late-summer article submissions – it’s a new academic year! At the Canadian Sociological Association, this means we will soon kick into high gear again and set our sights on planning the 2025 annual Conference after a brief summer hiatus for the Executive Committee and our amazing Executive Director. As the year ahead slowly unfolds, I wanted to take this chance to note a few issues that will hold my attention in my coming year as CSA President.
CSA @ Congress 2025: The CSA Executive decided in August to participate in the 2025 Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences in Toronto next May/June. We heard many of the complaints and concerns about recent Congresses and recognize that the 2024 Congress experience was not what any of our members had expected. Moving forward for this year, we are hoping to explore multiple ways of participating in the CSA 2025 annual Conference so that we can try to meet the needs of our diverse membership. By offering a variety of ways to participate in the sessions and share our research with each other, we hope to offer a streamlined conference program that highlights the amazing work of all our members, at the same time as focusing a spotlight on key issues, contributions, and plenaries. The Conference planning committee is looking forward to working closely with the CSA Research Clusters to make our program at Congress 2025 a supportive, exciting, and accessible time for all CSA members.
CSA Annual Conference 2026: At the same time as we plan for Congress 2025, I have heard from many members who want the CSA to explore possible alternatives for the CSA outside of the Congress/Federation framework. We’ve been down this road before; however, given some of the recent challenges to Congress posed by increasing costs, COVID, labour unrest, and racial discrimination, many CSA members have again expressed a desire to consider what our alternatives to Congress might be. To this end, the CSA Executive Committee will poll the membership this month to gauge the extent of members’ interest in the CSA planning its annual Conference apart from Congress in 2026. Stay tuned for that poll, and please share your feedback and thoughts on this issue. It is doubtless easier for the CSA to stay the course at Congress, but if members’ needs might be better served by an independent annual Conference, then I feel obliged to lead the Executive Committee in exploring that possibility.
CSA Governance & Membership Engagement: As the CSA has evolved in recent years it is has grown organically by adding dozens of research clusters and several new subcommittees. The flourishing of the association in this way has been heartening. At the same time, the structure of the Association and its governance via the Executive Committee appears not to have adapted to some of this rapid growth. The EC has grown significantly in size, and yet finding CSA members willing to serve in key roles in the Executive and its associated committees has become increasingly challenging. I will work with the EC this year to explore ways that the association might be able to streamline its governance, while at the same time making participation in that governance more palatable and accessible to all CSA members. To this end, we will strike a working group of the EC to investigate possible options for making CSA governance more closely fit the association and its members’ needs.
Of course, I will be doing none of this in a vacuum and look very much forward to working with the continuing and incoming members of the CSA Executive in exploring these and other priorities. We hope to continue to strengthen the CSA relationship to Sociology Departments across Canada, sociology students at all levels, as well as to our many CSA Research Clusters. Finally, none of this will be possible without the continued dedication and leadership of our tireless Executive Director, Sherry Fox – her guidance and experience in all things CSA will be key to making this coming academic year a success.