Open Conference Systems

This conference focuses on the everyday practices of persons, and the interplay between actors and social structures in everyday life. Everyday life in the Nordic and Europeans societies is characterized by an unprecedented rupture of economic and political systems, cultural meanings and individual identities. Global and environmental changes force us to revise and reconsider our way of life and affects us at all levels of existence. It appears as if that which seems stable today will be rendered unstable tomorrow.

The conference focuses on these changes and transformations and aims to debate and discuss how this can be understood and explored. What theories, methodologies and analytical concepts help us to study the transformations of everyday life in changing societies?

The conference will be the third in a series of international conferences organized by the Nordic Research Network for Everyday Life Processes in European Societies (ELPiES). The network was founded in 2007 by Kajsa Ellegård, Department of Technology and Social Change, Linköping University, Sweden, Lars Dencik and Allan Westerling, Department of Psychology and Educational Studies, Roskilde University, Denmark, and Pirjo Korvela, Department of Home Economics and Craft Science, University of Helsinki, Finland. In 2009 the ELPiES network received a major grant by the Nordic Council of Ministers to develop a Nordic Master Program in Everyday Life Studies.

During the conference scholars will meet, discuss and exchange ideas, perspectives and research practices in everyday life studies. The research field comprises multi- and interdisciplinary approaches and dwells on different complexes of problems concerning people's daily lives in different phases of the life course. A general focus of the conference will be on the theoretical and methodological challenges in the study of everyday life.

The conference will comprise six sub-themes during the conference. Keynote presentations will be given the first day and workshops on each sub-theme will be held the second day. The third day will focus on the theoretical and methodological challenges of everyday life research.

Keynote speakers
Christena Nippert-Eng, University of Illinois
Ben Highmore, University of Sussex
Birthe Bech-Jørgensen, Aalborg University
Ole Dreier, University of Copenhagen
Karin Aronsson, Stockholm University

Announcements