Luke and I started Applied Worldwide in October of 2019 and attending conferences like the annual American Sociological Association (ASA) meetings was always a part of our plan as a business. It would be one of the ways we would stay up-to-date in the discipline while we conducted sociological work in our community. Well, shortly after we started our business there was a multi-year global pandemic that changed our strategy for connecting with other sociologists.
Over the past few years, we’ve attended virtual conferences when we could and connected with a ton of sociologists remotely. But, this has been our first time attending ASA in person as Applied Worldwide, and it was an exciting one! So, here I want to share some of our highlights from the 2024 ASA conference in Montréal, Quebec in Canada.
Networking and Catching Up with Colleagues
One of the highlights of attending conferences is seeing old colleagues. It is fun to catch up on their current work and share ideas back and forth. I have not seen many of these folks for a long time for the reasons stated above, so it was really awesome. A lot of those folks were colleagues from graduate school and our time at Purdue University. I caught up with a couple friends who came to my PhD program just after me and are now finishing their dissertations, including Vasundhara Kaul and Reilly Kincaid. Then I also got to see others from grad school who have gone on to have successful careers as sociologists after finishing their PhD—one, Zachary Palmer, who is working on a book about being trans in Texas, and another, Abigail Nawrocki, who is a survey statistician at the U.S. Census Bureau.
I also got to connect with some sociologists that I’ve known for years online, in person for the first time, including two of our profilees, Ethan Czuy Levine and Sara Cumming. Another profilee I got to catch up with was Mindy Fried, who has been a wonderful mentor for me the past few years having had a successful career in sociology consulting herself in the Boston area. I even ran into some colleagues during my travel at the airport, including Brenda Wilhelm of Colorado Mesa University who has partnered with us using Twitter in the classroom and assigning student blogs. Overall, it was an amazing time catching up with old friends and colleagues, making new ones, and meeting some year-long colleagues in person for the first time!
My Participation in ASA 2024
During the conference I played a couple of different roles. First, I wore my “Media Editor” hat for Alpha Kappa Delta (AKD), the international sociology honors society, to attend their annual council meeting. In addition to attending the council meeting to provide a report on my work as their media editor, I also attended any presentations related to AKD I could, including a roundtable presentation from one of their graduate student paper winners, and the AKD Distinguished Lecture. Doing so allowed me to capture some moments from the conference to use for AKD’s website and socials.
Second, I was the organizer for this year’s Sociology in Practice Settings Symposium, which is a full day of sessions focused on amplifying the work sociologists do outside of the academy. While I was the organizer, I would like to acknowledge my committee members and fellow applied sociologists who helped plan the symposium. The symposium included four sessions starting at 8:00AM and going to 3:30PM. We had presenters who worked in the government, with community organizations, and for non-profits. It was a fabulous day of celebrating the potential of sociology when it leaves the ivory tower, and many wonderful discussions were had together in that room. Thank you to everyone who joined us for the symposium!
The final role I got to play at the conference was simply an attendee. I got to put my social researcher hat on and learn about new and innovative research methods and exciting strategies for research in the community. Being able to learn from how other sociologists—applied and academic alike—approach their work always brings new inspiration to my own work. While being an attendee at a conference may seem like a passive role, it can definitely be as active as you make it, which was my goal.
My Favorite Research
With that said, one of the highlights of attending ASA was definitely getting to see all of the diverse and innovative research being presented. I went to a few notable research sessions including a roundtable on social psychology, the AKD Distinguished Lecture, and a session organized by a colleague at the U.S. Census Bureau discussing their approach to modernizing their surveys for the digital age.
I would have to say the AKD Distinguished Lecture was my favorite research presentation I attended. For the lecture, I got to hear from Professor Jennifer Sherman about her ethnographic research in rural America, which was particularly interesting to me as someone who is planting roots in the rural Mojave Desert of Arizona. The presentation was based off her book, Dividing Paradise: Rural Inequality and the Diminishing American Dream. Sherman’s talk was a relatable and fascinating lecture with insights I will absolutely take home with me to rural Arizona as I engage with my own community. For anyone looking to understand rural America with a more critical and empathetic eye, I highly recommend Sherman’s book!
Final Thoughts on Attending ASA 2024
This year I attended the ASA conference for the first time since 2016—that’s eight whole years! Of course, I’ve been to other sociology conferences both remotely and in person since then, but there is something special about attending ASA. For nearly five days, it feels like sociologists take over the city in which the conference is hosted. You are constantly surrounded by other sociologists who mostly see the world through the same lens as you and who care about the same issues as you. It was a time to find renewed pride in my identity as a sociologist, despite the many attempts from state governments to devalue our discipline over recent years.
The next ASA conference in 2025 will be held in Chicago, and I am already looking forward to reconnecting with likeminded people in the Windy City. I hope to see you there!
