Cycling and Society Virtual Symposium 2020 – Call for Abstracts

Cycling and Society Virtual Symposium 2020

UPDATED Call for contributions:
Transformative approaches for cycling in a changing world.
Contributions by 16th August 2020

Quick Links: Register to attend and/or submit a contribution

Due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic the Cycling and Society symposium will be a little different this year. Although there won’t be a physical meeting, we’re keen to continue to facilitate dialogue and bring together cycling research and researchers from across the world.

The CSRG committee and the Healthy Active Cities team at University of Salford will be hosting:

  • an online collection of concise and creative contributions – for participants and interested parties to read and watch at their leisure;
  • a series of webinars across 10th and 11th September, discussing and reflecting on the online collection and featuring debates, interviews, discussants and Q&A.

How can I contribute?

We’re inviting you to provide online contributions.

These should be concise and creative contributions and be suitable for sharing on the Cycling and Society website. We are happy for these contributions to take any form.

For example, they could  be voice-over presentations, short videos, photo essays,  film explorations of cycle journeys – creativity is encouraged!

All contributions will be considered, and if selected will will be placed on the Cycling and Society website – so we will require authors’ consent to publish the contribution.

Please make sure your contribution is no longer than 15 minutes in length.

Name(s) and affiliations of the authors should be provided for all contributions.

How does it work?

All submitted contributions that are appropriate will be placed on our website (there is no selection process apart from this). A subset of contributors will be invited to participate in discussion/debate panel sessions in our webinars.

  • (EXTENDED from 31 July) 16 August – submit your contribution by this date through our online form (below)
  • 21st August – all appropriate submitted contributions will be made available our website as we receive them. We will notify authors when we upload their content to our website.
  • 24th August – we’ll announce when the panels will be, on what themes they will focus, and who will be taking part
  • 10th and 11th September – our online symposium takes place. If you are an accepted author, please save these dates!

Do I need to submit an abstract?

No. There is no need to submit an abstract. You can simply upload your contribution, e.g. a voice-over presentation or video. The new deadline for this is 16 August.

If you would like to run your idea by us before committing to producing it though, that is absolutely fine. Please email us at cyclingandsociety@gmail.com

How will participants be selected?

All suitable contributions will be uploaded to the website unless we judge them to be inappropriate (for example, they break copyright, are offensive or, even worse, have nothing to do with cycling). All contributions must be 15 minutes or shorter. If we have concerns, we will discuss these with the author.

Participants for the webinar sessions will be selected by the committee in order to provide a spread of topics and inform discussion.

What are the themes?

Contributors are encouraged, but not obliged, to respond to our Transformative approaches for a cycling society theme, and the following areas:

  • Creating physical and conceptual spaces for cycling
  • Cycling in a time of Coronavirus: disruption and crisis
  • International perspectives
  • Micromobilities and the future of sharing
  • Carrying people, carrying cargo
  • Approaches to health, wellbeing, safety and security
  • Inequalities and exclusions in cycling and how they can be exacerbated or alleviated in Covid19 times.

Please bear in mind our Mission Statement when considering your contributions.

And finally…

We will think about virtual networking opportunities and we would also encourage ideas and offers of online fringe events that could be held as part of Cycling and Society in September.

If you have any questions or suggestions, please get in touch with us at cyclingandsociety@gmail.com.

Upload your contributions via this form by 16th August. (Or you can send it with a brief description to cyclingandsociety@gmail.com)