The 1st International Online Conference on Social Sciences
The 1st International Online Conference on Social Sciences
Part of the International Online Conference on Social Sciences series
Event's Timezone: Central European Summer Time
23 February 2026
23 March 2026
25 May 2026
Family Studies, Gender Studies, Childhood, Crime, Justice
The IOCSS2026 is now OPEN for Abstract Submission and Registration.
Instruction for authors are available online.
Submit your abstract HERE.
For any inquiries, please contact us at iocss2026@mdpi.com.
Welcome from the Chairs
This conference will offer a platform for scholars, researchers and experts from across the social science community to exchange innovative and impactful research. The conference is oriented around general themes across the social sciences, including, but not limited to, the following:
We anticipate submissions encompassing individual paper presentations and pre-arranged panels on specific thematic topics, as well as plenary sessions involving invited world-leading speakers.
The event will take place via Sciforum.net, a platform developed and sponsored by MDPI to organize and provide technical support for electronic conferences. The conference’s virtual format offers the distinct advantage of eliminating the need for travel and its associated expenses, allowing you to engage in quick and direct exchanges of the latest research findings and innovative ideas.
We look forward to welcoming you to this exciting event and providing an opportunity to hear about your research.
Kind regards,
Professor Daniel McCarthy, University of Surrey, Guildford, UK
Dr. Lawrence Ho, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei City, Taiwan
Event Chairs
McCarthy is currently Professor in Criminology in the Department of Sociology/Co-Director of the Centre for Criminology. He specialises in research in areas of policing, inter-agency working, and more latterly in the area of prison/family effects and incarceration. He also has interests in cross-national research, including emphasis on public attitudes to policing and punishment (especially the death penalty). Prof. McCarthy's wider interests concern the effects of family contact on prisoner re-entry, the impact of prison conditions on prisoner behaviour during and beyond their sentence, as well as more generally in the application of criminological theory. He is author of 'Soft Policing: The Collaborative Control of Anti-Social Behaviour' (Palgrave, 2014), 'The Impact of Youth Imprisonment on the Lives of Parents' (with Maria Adams, Routledge, 2023) and 'Beyond Porridge' (with Maria Adams, Jon Garland, Vicki Harman, Erin Power and Talitha Brown( Waterside Press, 2024), as well as numerous articles in the fields of criminology and sociology. He has received several grants and awards including the 2014 British Society of Criminology (Policing Network) award, the 2014 Economic and Social Research Council, Future Leaders Award, as well as the 2015 Vice Chancellor's 'Researcher of the Year' Award. He also was co-awarded the Faculty Teacher of the Year Prize (2019).
National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei City, Taiwan
Lawrence Ka-ki HO currently works at the Department of Social Sciences (SSC), The Education University of Hong Kong. He is also Fellow of the Centre for Criminology, The University of Hong Kong. Lawrence does research in History and Sociology of Policing, Comparative Policing Practices, Policing Issues and Challenges in Greater China and East Asia. He also extends his researches to sports in these years. Issues of politics and sociology of sports are under research.
Session Chairs
Dr. Pierre Desrochers
Department of Geography, University of Toronto Mississauga, Mississauga, Canada
Dr. Pierre Desrochers is an Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Toronto, Mississauga. He holds a Ph.D. in geography from the University of Montreal. His main research interests are economic development, technical innovation, the business–environment interface, and energy policy and food policy. He has published on these and other subjects in a wide range of academic disciplines and outlets. He is a Senior Fellow at the Fraser Institute and an affiliate scholar with several other think tanks. He is the author of over 250 columns and op-eds on a variety of subjects in major international media, including The Wall Street Journal and Le Monde. He has published or co-authored three books, including the 2018–19 Donner Prize short-listed Population Bombed! He was awarded the Julian L. Simon Memorial Award by the Competitive Enterprise Institute in 2017.
Prof. Dr. James O Finckenauer
School of Criminal Justice, Rutgers University, Newark, USA
James O. Finckenauer is Professor for criminal justice in New Jersey/USA. He received his Master degree in sociology and criminology in 1965 and his PhD in 1971 at New York University. The topic of his doctoral dissertation was “Police Community Contact and the Stereotypic Image of the Police in a Suburban Community”. Among others, he worked as Professor and Chairman of the Department of Criminal Justice at Trenton State College/New Jersey and Associate Professor as well as Professor in the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University in Newark/New Jersey, where he also was founding member of the faculty. From 1998 to 2002, Finckenauer was Director of the International Center at the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs of the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington D.D. and since 2001 he works as Distinguished Professor at the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University in Newark/New Jersey. Finckenauer is specialist on the topics organized crime, comparative and international crime and justice, criminal justice policy as well as planning and evaluation. Currently he is doing research on transnational organized crime and sex trafficking, cultural deviance and the fate of the rule-of-law and a culture of lawfulness in Russia. A great number of books, journal articles and book chapters he has published deal with organized crime, such as the books “Russian Mafia in America: Immigration, Culture and Crime” (with E. Waring, 1998) and “Asian Transnational Organized Crime” (with Ko-lin Chin, 2007). For his dedicated work, Finckenauer has received numerous awards and honors, two of the latest are the New Jersey Association of Criminal Justice Educators Jack Mark Memorial Award for contributions to criminal justice education at the state, national and international levels in 2005 and the Gerhard O. W. Mueller International Section Award by the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences in 2009.
Prof. Antonio Bova
Social Psychology, Department of Psychology, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart, Milan, Italy
Dr. Bova's research activity has been centered on the strict relationship between communication, psychology and education. His first area of research interest is the stream of research on family argumentation. This research aimed at identifying the functions of argumentation in discussions between parents and young children during mealtimes. His second, and most recent, main area of research interest is the stream of research on argumentation in institutional learning contexts. The purpose of this research is to describe and analyze how the argumentative practices in the classroom are managed by teachers and students both at undergraduate and graduate level. The results his research activity have been published in some of the most important scientific journals in the fields of argumentation theory, psychology and communication (e.g., Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology, Discourse Studies, Appetite, Journal of Argumentation in Context, Learning, Culture and Social Interaction, Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict) and presented at many international scientific conferences. He was visiting doctoral researcher (2011 – 2012) in the Department of Speech Communication, Argumentation Theory and Rhetoric at the University of Amsterdam (Netherlands), and visiting postdoctoral researcher (2013 – 2015) in the Department of Psychology at the Utrecht University (Netherlands). Dr. Bova is also Swiss National Science Foundation Researcher in the Institute of Argumentation, Linguistics and Semiotics at the Università della Svizzera italiana (USI), Lugano, and a member of the National Register of Psychologists and Psychotherapists in Switzerland and in Italy.
Committee Members
Criminal Justice and Legal Studies, The University of Mississippi, University Park, Mississipi, USA
Police, Criminology, Law Enforcement, International Security, Security Studies, Criminal Justice, Law and Legal Studies, Violence Prevention, Victimology
Safety Culture, Risky Behaviors, Violence, Children, Trauma, Domestic Violence, Sexual Aggression, Delinquency
Social cohesion, Social inclusion, Civil society, Impact Evaluation, International Development, Sociology
Victimology, Sexual Assault Among College Students, Child Abuse and Neglect, Technology-Facilitated Victimization
Regional and Demographic Analysis, Information Systems
Mathematics Department, Faculty of Education of Toledo, Castilla La Mancha University, Spain
Science and Mathematics Education, STEM Education
Interim Dean, School of Education, and Professor of Sociology, University of Roehampton, London, UK
Gender, Sports
Disaster Risk Reduction, Airway Management, Resuscitation, Critical Care Medicine, Emergency Management, Pain Management
Economy, International Trade, Latin America
Université Paris-Est Créteil, Paris, France
Woman in STEM Promotion, Gender Violence in Academia, Dispersive and Nonlinear Wave Analysis
Department of Education and Psychology, University of Florence, Florence, Italy
Gender, Migration, Interculturalism, Geo-political Frame, Education, Populism
Department of Developmental and Educational Psychology, The University of Seville, Sevilla, Spain
Psychology, Motivation, Resilience, Educational Psychology, Early Childhood Education, Teaching and Learning, Classroom Management
Department of Educational Psychology, Leadership and Higher Education, University Nevada Las Vegas, Las Vegas, USA
Student learning and development, Working with and in diverse organizations, Community-based research, and issues concerning preparing culturally responsive leaders in higher education
Keynote Speakers
University Professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government, George Mason University, USA
Faye S. Taxman, Ph.D., is a University Professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University and a leading health services criminologist. She is internationally recognized for developing seamless systems-of-care models that connect the criminal justice system with healthcare and social services, as well as for reengineering probation and parole supervision. Over her career, she has secured more than $100 million in external grant funding to conduct experiments on improving treatment access and retention, testing new probation models aligned with the Risk-Need-Responsivity (RNR) framework, and designing interventions to enhance both individual and organizational outcomes, including procedural justice. Dr. Taxman is a pioneer in creating translational tools that facilitate the implementation of research into practice, including the RNR Simulation Tool (www.gmuace.org/tools) which enhances assessment use and treatment matching, and the Cascade of Care toolkit (https://www.jcoinctc.org/cascade-of-care) which supports system-level planning and measurement. She has published over 230 scholarly articles and authored several influential books, such as Implementing Evidence-Based Community Corrections and Addiction Treatment (Springer, 2012, with Steven Belenko) and Handbook on Moving Corrections and Sentencing Forward (Routledge, 2020, with Pamela Lattimore and Beth Huebner). Currently, Dr. Taxman serves as Principal Investigator for the Justice Community Overdose Innovation Network (JCOIN) Coordination and Translation Center, funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Her extensive contributions have earned her numerous prestigious awards, including the Joan McCord Award (2017), the Lifetime Achievement Award (2019), and the August Vollmer Award (2023) from the American Society of Criminology. She is also a Fellow of the American Society of Criminology and recipient of the SIRC Mission Award (2022). Dr. Taxman earned her Ph.D. from Rutgers University’s School of Criminal Justice.
criminology, substance abuse, behavioral health, implementation science, intervention development, translational science, dissemination, experiments
Registration
The registration for IOCSS 2026 will be free of charge! The registration includes attendance to all conference sessions.
If you are registering several people under the same registration, please do not use the same email address for each person, but their individual university email addresses. Thank you for your understanding.
Please note that the submission and registration are two separate parts. Only scholars who registered can receive a link to access the conference live streaming.
The deadline for registration is 25 May 2026.
Instructions for Authors
The 1st International Online Conference on Social Sciences will accept abstracts only.
The accepted abstracts will be available online on Sciforum.net during and after the conference.
• Deadline for abstract submission: 23 February 2026.
• Announcement of oral and poster abstract results: 23 March 2026. You will be notified of the acceptance of an oral/poster presentation in a separate email.
Certificates of Participation are available in your logged-in area of Sciforum.net, under “My Certificates” after the conference.
Abstract submissions should be completed online by registering with www.sciforum.net and using the "Submit Abstract" function once logged into the system. No physical template is necessary.
• The abstract structure should include the introduction, methods, results, and conclusions sections of about 200–300 words in length.
• All abstracts should be submitted and presented in clear, publication-ready English with accurate grammar and spelling.
• You may submit multiple abstracts. However, only one abstract will be selected for oral presentation.
Detailed Requirements:
1. The submitting author must ensure that all co-authors are aware of the contents of the abstract.
2. Please select only one presenter for each submission. If you would like to change the presenter after submission, please email us accordingly.
Note: We only accept live presentations.
The slot for the oral presentation is 15 minutes. We advise that your presentation lasts for a maximum of 12 mins, leaving at least 3 mins for the Q&A session.
• Authors are encouraged to prepare a presentation in PowerPoint or similar software, to be displayed online along with the abstract.
• Slides will be displayed online alongside the abstract via the Sciforum.net proprietary viewer.
• Please convert your slides to PDF format before submission to ensure compatibility.
• Slide preparation should follow standard conference practices, as for any event where research results are shared.
• Should include the title, authors, contact details and main research findings, as well as tables, figures and graphs where necessary.
• Size in pixel: 1080 width x 1536 height–portrait orientation.
• Size in cm: 38,1 width x 54,2 height–portrait orientation.
• Font size: ≥16.
• Examples of successful submissions can be viewed here at the following links: (1), (2), (3)
• You can use our free template to create your poster. The poster template can be downloaded HERE.
It is the author's responsibility to identify and declare any personal circumstances or interests that may be perceived as inappropriately influencing the representation or interpretation of clinical research. If there is no conflict, please state "The authors declare no conflicts of interest." This should be conveyed in a separate "Conflict of Interest" statement preceding the "Acknowledgments" and "References" sections at the end of the manuscript. Any financial support for the study must be fully disclosed in the "Acknowledgments" section.
MDPI, the publisher of the Sciforum.net platform, is an open access publisher. We believe authors should retain the copyright to their scholarly works. Hence, by submitting an abstract to this conference, you retain the copyright to the work, but you grant MDPI the non-exclusive right to publish this abstract online on the Sciforum.net platform. This means you can easily submit your full paper (with the abstract) to any scientific journal at a later stage and transfer the copyright to its publisher if required.
Publication Opportunities
1. Social Sciences Journal Publication
Participants in this conference are cordially invited to contribute a full manuscript to the conference's Special Issue, published in Social Sciences (ISSN 2076-0760; IF: 1.7), with a 20% discount on the publication fee. All submitted papers will undergo MDPI’s standard peer-review procedure. The abstracts should be cited and noted on the first page of the paper.
Please note if you have IOAP/association discounts, conference discounts will be combined with IOAP/association discounts. Conference discounts cannot be combined with reviewer vouchers.
2. Proceeding Paper Publication
All accepted abstracts will be published in the conference report of the 1st International Online Conference on Social Sciences in Proceedings (ISSN 2504-3900); if you wish to publish an extended proceeding paper (4-8 pages), please submit it to the same journal after the conference.
Authors are asked to disclose that it is a proceeding paper of the IOCSS 2026 conference paper in their cover letter. Carefully read the rules outlined in the Instructions for Authors on the journal’s website and ensure that your submission adheres to these guidelines.
Proceedings submission deadline: 17 July 2026.
Manuscripts for the proceedings issue must be formatted as follows:
• Title;
• Full author names;
• Affiliations (including full postal address) and authors' e-mail addresses;
• Abstract;
• Keywords;
• Introduction;
• Methods;
• Results and Discussion;
• Conclusions;
• Acknowledgements;
• References.
Please click HERE to submit your proceeding paper to Proceedings.
Proceedings Template
Event Awards
The Awards
Number of Awards Available: 4
Best Oral Presentation Award
- Eligibility: Open to all authors selected as oral speakers who have delivered their presentation.
- Criteria: Evaluation based on content quality, delivery clarity, audience interaction, and overall impact.
Best Poster Award
- Eligibility: Open to all authors who have presented their work through posters.
- Criteria: Evaluation based on scientific merit, creativity, and ability to attract and engage viewers.
The final allocation will be determined once the conference begins, based on the number and type of submissions received.
The winners will receive a certificate and 200 CHF each.
Sponsors and Partners
For information regarding sponsorship and exhibition opportunities, please click here.
Organizers
Media Partners
Conference Secretariat
Ms. Dora Szepesi
Mr. Ionut Spatar
Mr. Russell Wang
Email:iocss2026@mdpi.com
For inquiries regarding submissions and sponsorship opportunities, please feel free to contact us.
