Motto: Love in cultural contexts
Dates: March of 14 –16, 2025
Format: The online conference will present pre-recorded talks, followed by the Zoom livestreaming of thematic panel sessions.
Topics of love have become popular across many academic fields, such as anthropology, sociology, psychology, biology, linguistics, literary studies, history, philosophy, religious studies, and other disciplines. The increasing number of studies on love worldwide has gotten to the point where academics and practitioners who are interested in this topic want to have a dedicated platform for the exchange of ideas and research findings and a forum for dialogue and discussion. Therefore, the Conference is going to be truly multidisciplinary and international in its scope.
After the great success of the First International Conference on Love Studies, which the Institute of Love Studies organized in January of 2024, many researchers from around the world expressed interest in having the Second Conference focused on research on love.
The mission of the Conference on Love Studies is to bring together researchers and practitioners from various disciplines as well as non-academic professionals to speak about their research projects and findings. The diverse themes of the conference include love as internal experiences and expressions as well as interpersonal relationships. The conference considers love in the varieties of its meanings, cultural models, social forms, and individual types. All kinds of love are pertinent to this conference. We are open to different methodologies from different fields of research.
The overview of the First Conference, its Program, and the video recordings of selected presentations can give you an impression of the diverse scope of the possible topics.
Scholarly knowledge of love is scattered across many disciplines around the world. The aim of the conference is to enrich the research-based knowledge of love through cross-pollination of ideas and findings from various disciplines and countries. We hope that the Conference will bring this diverse knowledge together in a scholarly framework that is both universal and culturally specific. Such an interdisciplinary and international forum of love researchers should be able to bring numerous and diverse studies of love and practices into a complex and comprehensive picture of research-based knowledge.
The Advisory Board of the Conference invites researchers and practitioners from various disciplines to submit their proposals for presentations on a wide range of love-related topics. The deadline for submitting proposals is January 14, 2025. Notifications of acceptance will be sent by January 20.
Registration for participation in the Conference on Love Studies
The registration will start on January 20, 2025, and the registration link will be posted on the conference website.
Tickets for participation in the conference:
Standard registration fee (from January 20 until February 20): $95
Book your place before February 20 to take advantage of the standard registration offer!
Late registration fee (after February 20 until March 12): $135
Presenters must register by March 1 to be included in the program.
You can see the details of the prospective conference format, call for proposals, and submission form below.
Format of the Second Conference on Love Studies
The conference events will be held virtually via online videoconferencing, including both asynchronous and synchronous formats.
Asynchronous format. Participants will be watching conference presentations in asynchronous format. That means that these conference events won’t take place in real time. Instead, participants will watch pre-recorded presentations on their own schedule, at their own pace, and in their own time zone. This asynchronous format of the conference events allows for flexibility and freedom.
Participants will have an opportunity to submit their questions and comments to presenters. The chairs of specific thematic panel sessions will aggregate these questions and comments for discussion in designated real-time slots from 14 to 16 March of 2025.
Synchronous format. Thematic panel sessions of the conference will take place via online live streaming in Zoom on 14, 15, and 16 March, 2025, according to their schedule. Each thematic panel session will take place in real time according to UTC (Coordinated Universal Time).
During these online thematic panel sessions, presenters will have the opportunity to deliver a 3-minute livestreaming summary of their 15-minute pre-recorded presentation followed by a panel discussion. The chair of the session will guide the panel session and moderate by facilitating an interactive discussion on the topic, which will include questions, answers, as well as audience comments. The discussant will help the audience better understand the presentations by serving as a commentator on them and the questions concerning them.
This synchronous format of panel sessions allows for more time and opportunity for interaction, engagement, and discussion of each presentation and the thematic topic of a session overall.
Specific details and a timetable for the conference will be available on the conference website.
Instructions for presenters on how to prepare for the conference
Presenters must register for the conference, submit their pre-recorded presentations to the conference website, and participate in the thematic panel session in which their presentations are scheduled.
Upon acceptance of submitted proposals, presenters prepare and pre-record their 15-minute talks for uploading onto the conference website. Instructions about possible ways to do this will be posted on the conference website.
Presenters should send their pre-recorded 15-min presentations to the conference organizers at [email protected] before February 25. Conference organizers will make these presentations available for other participants to watch in advance of the thematic panel sessions.
In a scheduled online thematic panel session, presenters will have 3 minutes to review and summarize the key points of their 15-minute pre-recorded presentations. In the following panel discussion, presenters will answer questions and have an opportunity to hear reflections and comments on their presentations from an audience, discussant, and chair of the session.
If you have any questions about the conference schedule or submission process, please contact us at [email protected]
You can see the details of the Call for proposals, and submission form here.
The Institute of Love Studies considers publishing the conference proceedings.