Past PSA Annual Meetings/Conferences
PSA holds its Annual Meeting for four days between mid-March and mid-April each year. Attendance averages 900-1100, about half students (undergraduate and graduate) and half faculty, retired, and applied sociologists as well as others interested in sociology. Undergraduate students can submit proposals to participate in either roundtable or poster sessions; all others can submit proposals to present in regular sessions. There are over 2oo sessions each year. The conference rotates through areas of the PSA region, so that once every three years it is held in the Northern, Central, and Southern area. PSA strives to keep conference attendance affordable, as this is vital to its mission of both supporting sociological research and the development of the next generation of sociologists.
Visit pages devoted to specific Annual Meetings to learn more.
Recent PSA Annual Meetings:
Click on a link to view the program.
2022 In-Person (3 days) Sacramento, California, and Virtual (1 day) President Wendy Ng “Telling Our Stories: Collective Memory and Narratives of Race, Gender, and Community Identity”
2021 Virtual President Sharon K. Davis “The New Normal and the Redefinition of Deviance”
2020 Preliminary program–The conference planned for Eugene, Oregon had to be cancelled due to COVID-19. President Dennis Downey “Democracy in a Divided Society”
2019 Oakland, California President Elaine Bell Kaplan “Engaging Millennials: Researching and Teaching about Power, Diversity, and Change”
2018 Long Beach, California President Amy J. Orr “Teaching Sociology: Innovations, Changes, and Challenges”
2017 Portland, Oregon President Karen Pyke “Institutional Betrayal: Inequity, Discrimination, Bullying, and Retaliation in Academia”
2016 Oakland, California President Robert Nash Parker “Linking Theory and Practice: The Conduct of Sociology”
2015 Long Beach, California President Patricia A. Gwartney “People, Place and Power”
2014 Portland, Oregon President Amy Wharton “(Un)Changing Institutions: Work, Family, and Gender in the New Economy”
2013 Reno/Sparks, Nevada President Valerie Jenness “Research and Teaching Matters: Creating Knowledge, Policy, and Justice”
2012 San Diego, California President Beth Schneider “Intersectionalities and Inequalities: Knowledge and Power for the 21st Century”
2011 Seattle, Washington President Sharon Araji “Domestic Violence Continued: Contested Child Custody”
2010 Oakland, California President Michael Messner “Revitalizing the Sociological Imagination”
2009 San Diego, California President Judith Treas “Recession: Pain & the Blame Game”
2008 Portland, Oregon President Jodi O’Brien “Sociology as an Epistemology of Contradiction”
2007 Oakland, California President Charles Hohm “Sociology in the Academy: How the Discipline is Viewed by Administrators”
2006 Hollywood, California President Peter Nardi “Playing with Sociology: Truth in Disguise of Illusion”
2005 Portland, Oregon President Pepper Schwartz “Answering the ‘So What?’ Question”
2004 San Francisco, California President Earl Babbie “Sociology: An Idea of Whose Time Has Come”