Call for abstracts for a two-in-one event
the19th Ethnography Symposium and
the 16th International Conference on Organizational Discourse
Work, Words and Lifeworlds
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
2-3 July 2026
Preceded by the 13th Ethnography Workshop on 1 July
Over the past few decades, many scholars have enjoyed attending the Ethnography Symposium and the Organizational Discourse Conference. Both events excelled at establishing and maintaining a supportive culture that provided a home for critical, interpretive research into organization and working lives. And yet, curiously, the separate communities rarely mingled. We will change that. As both events have developed their own traditions and reputations and created their own communities, we want to preserve their specific strengths and spirit. We also see great value in providing an opportunity for researchers from both scholarly communities to engage with one another. To this end, we create a two-in-one platform and invite scholars to present and discuss their work at a joint event in Amsterdam.
This event brings together two communities with distinct yet deeply connected sensibilities: the discourse scholar’s attention to talk, text, and representation, and the ethnographer’s attention to the symbolic dimensions of people’s everyday sayings and doings. Both take an interest in the political and subjective dimensions of meaning-making; both share a concern for how power positions, emotions and identities are co-constructed; both demonstrate an ironic wonder over or critical perspective on everyday processes of organizing; and both focus on interpretive, situated, and performative acts of knowing. Ethnographers may appreciate a detailed analysis of (inter)subjective distortions and hidden politics of language-in-use, just as discourse scholars may be inspired by ethnography’s dedication to fieldwork, textwork and thick description.
By creating a space for dialogue between these traditions, we can further unravel the complexities of the everyday through detailed analyses of talk and text, describing the thick layers of meaning in people’s discourses and practices, and immersing ourselves in people’s life-worlds to understand their speech acts and use of artefacts ‘from within’. We may discuss how different truths are circulated, imposed, negotiated or contested in social and organizational life. In times when the work of meaning-making has never been more fragile and more consequential and academic expertise is itself under attack: How can we develop and maintain respectful pluriversal relations between different worldviews? And what does it mean to be reflexive, responsible, and responsive scholars?
Our aim is to provide an inspirational environment in which academics with various perspectives on organization, ethnography and discourse, and from all walks and stages of academic life, engage in lively, constructive dialogue, generating new theoretical, empirical and methodological insights. In keeping with the broad, interdisciplinary tradition of the Ethnography Symposium and the Organizational Discourse Conference, we welcome contributions on a variety of topics and themes, such as:
- Power, practices and performativity
- Meaning-making, stories and narrative
- Time, space and materiality
- Inclusion, exclusion and the intersections
- Crisis, change and transformation
- Posthumanism and multispecies analysis
- Discursive methodologies, ethnography and organisational life
- Relational and temporal sensemaking
Pre-conference workshop
For early career scholars, we also organize a pre-conference workshop together with the organizers of the Ethnography Workshop open to all early career scholars. The Ethnography Workshop is a collaboration of different institutions—Cardiff, Emlyon, Esade, Paris Dauphine, VU Amsterdam—and aims to provide a platform for PhD-researchers and postdocs to present and discuss their work. Partly sponsored by the Department of Organization Sciences at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, we offer a one-day program and a dinner that will give a soft landing for the conference.
Guidelines for Submission
Prospective contributors interested in presenting a paper should submit an abstract of approximately 1,000 words by 15 February 2026. Further information on fees, accommodation and registration will be shared on the conference website (still under construction):
ethnodiscourse conference. Queries regarding this conference can be made to info.edconference.org@vu.nl.
We look forward to seeing you in July 2026!
The Organizing team
Conference secretariat: Mo Robertus, Elles Bandringa
Conference organisers: Patrizia Hoyer, Bernhard Resch, Ida Sabelis, Harry Wels, Sierk Ybema
Ethnoworkshop organising committee: Suze van der Aa, Ilja van Reijn, Grietje Smit, Merlijn van Hulst
Discourse Conference committee: Galit Ailon, Anita Mangan, Lucy McCarthy, Cliff Oswick, Cara Reed; Ethnography Symposium committee: Mike Rowe, Tom Vine; Ethnography workshop committee: Nicolas Balas (U. Paris Dauphine), Virginie Blum (Emlyon), David Courpasson (Emlyon), Rick Delbridge (Cardiff), Guillaume Dumont (Emlyon), Ignasi Marti (Esade), Sierk Ybema (VU Amsterdam).