Dates: 6 –8 March 2026
Format: The online conference will present pre-recorded talks, followed by the Zoom livestreaming of thematic panel sessions.
After the great success of the First and Second International Conferences on Love Studies, which the Institute of Love Studies convened in 2024 and 2025, many researchers from around the world expressed interest in having the Third Conference focused on research on love and relationships.
Conference Overview. The aim of the Conference on Love and Relationship Studies is to bring together researchers and practitioners from various disciplines and non-academic professionals to speak about their research projects and findings. The conference considers love in the varieties of its meanings, cultural models, social forms, individual types, internal experiences and expressions, and interpersonal relationships. Research on various kinds of love is relevant for presentations and discussions at this conference. We are open to different methodologies from different fields of research.
With the increasing number of studies on love and relationships across disciplines worldwide, researchers, practitioners, and other professionals are interested in sharing their research-based knowledge with their colleagues, who are involved in similar types of research and topics. Therefore, these conferences are to serve as a dedicated forum for the exchange of ideas and research findings and a forum for dialogue and discussion.
This Third Conference on Love and Relationship Studies will be once again multidisciplinary and international in its scope. Researchers, practitioners, and other professionals from any discipline and field of study and practice are welcome to present and discuss.
To get some impression of the diverse scope of possible topics, you can watch the selected video recordings from the First Conference and the Second Conference on the Institute of Love Studies’ YouTube channel.
Scholarly knowledge of love is scattered across many disciplines and around the world. These conferences are to enrich the research-based knowledge of love through cross-pollination of ideas and findings from various disciplines and countries. We hope that these conferences will bring the 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 Call for Proposals is closed now.
We have received many interesting proposals to present at the conference, and the organizational committee has notified those selected to be included in the program and present.
Organizers of the conference consider publishing the Proceedings of the International Institute of Love Studies 2026 as a special collection of the summary papers presented at the conference.
Registration for participation in the Third Conference on Love and Relationship Studies as attendees (without presentations) will open on February 6, 2026, and information will be posted on the conference website.
Format of the Third 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 6 to 8 March of 2026.
Synchronous format. Thematic panel sessions of the conference will take place via online live streaming in Zoom on 6, 7, and 8 March, 2026, 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 5-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.
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.
We have posted Instructions for presenters at the conference and tips for preparing presentations, their pre-recording, and participation in thematic sessions.
Specific details, program, and timetable for the conference will be available on the conference website in February.
We recommend you subscribe to the listserv of the Love Studies Institute to receive further messages about this conference as well as other news about love and relationship studies around the world at http://eepurl.com/ix7dfc