webinar

MDPI International Day of Families Webinar 2026

Name: MDPI International Day of Families Webinar 2026
Start: 2026-05-15T16:00:00
End: 2026-05-15T18:05:00

15 May 2026

16:00 (CEST)

Online

Welcome from
the chair

MDPI International Day of Families Webinar 2026

MDPI is pleased to announce a special webinar in celebration of International Day of Families on 15 May 2026. This event aims to raise awareness of the vital role families play in society and to explore the social, economic, and demographic factors that influence family well-being worldwide. It will also highlight the importance of family-oriented policies in promoting equality, supporting child development, and fostering sustainable social progress

Date: 15 May 2026
Time: 4:00 pm CEST | 10:00 pm CST Asia | 9:00 am CDT
Webinar ID: 851 6580 3522
Webinar Secretariat: journal.webinar@mdpi.com

Meet the Event Chair

Ms. Cheryl Lim

MDPI

Meet Our Speakers

View all speakers

Dr. Pan Wang

Associate Professor, Chinese and Asian Studies Deputy Education Convenor, HAL;
Pan Wang is an Associate Professor of Chinese and Asian Studies at the University of New South Wales. She is the author of Love and Marriage in Globalizing China (Routledge, 2015) and Love and Romance in China: From Comrades and Partners to AI Lovers (Bloomsbury, 2025). She is currently a Guest Editor of the Social Sciences Special Issue “Intimate Relationships in Diverse Social and Cultural Contexts” (2024).

Prof. Dr. John Bartkowski

Department of Sociology and Demography, University of Texas at San Antonio; San Antonio, Texas, United States;
John Bartkowski (Ph.D., University of Texas at Austin) is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Author of over 100 articles and four books, his work examines social factors that facilitate and inhibit family functioning, child development, and public health. He is also the President of Bartkowski & Associates Research Team, a firm that has evaluated federal, state, and foundation grants in the U.S.

Ms. Katherine Klee

Lead Evaluator, Bartkowski & Associates Research Team; San Antonio, Texas, United States;
Katherine Klee (M.S., University of Texas at San Antonio) is a Lead Evaluator at Bartkowski & Associates Research Team. Much of her published work explores social influences on mental and physical health. A series of her publications has examined suicide risk reduction factors and the results of suicide prevention initiatives.

Prof. Dr. Joseph G. Grzywacz

Associate Dean of Research, College of Health and Human Sciences, San Jose State University;
Joseph G. Grzywacz is an interdisciplinary population health scientist and academic leader. He currently serves as an Associate Dean for Research and Faculty at San Jose State University, and is an Editor-in-Chief of MDPI's Family Sciences. His 20+ years of continuous NIH-funded scholarship examine how work and family shape health and health equity across the course of life. He has published hundreds of peer-reviewed articles and mentored many emerging researchers.

Dr. Sampson Blair

University of Santo Tomas, Manila, Philippines;
Dr. Sampson Lee Blair is a family sociologist and demographer at The State University of New York (Buffalo). He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from Virginia Tech and his Ph.D. from Penn State. Much of his research focuses on family relationships, with particular emphasis on child, adolescent, and young adult development. He received the Fulbright Scholar Award from the U.S. Department of State, wherein he conducted research on parental involvement and children’s educational attainment in the Philippines. He has examined a wide variety of relationship dynamics within families around the globe. Furthermore, he has published 31 books, in addition to numerous journal articles and book chapters, and has presented over 160 research papers at conferences in the U.S. and abroad, while also serving as a keynote speaker on many occasions. His recent research has focused on marriage and fertility patterns in China and the Philippines. With Timothy J. Madigan and Fang Fang, he published Mate Selection in China: Causes and Consequences in the Search for a Spouse (2022) and Sociology of China: An Introduction (2025). He has served as Chair of the Children and Youth research section of the American Sociological Association, as senior editor of Sociological Inquiry, Guest Editor of Sociological Studies of Children and Youth, and on the Editorial Boards of Asian Women, Family Sciences, Family Transitions, Journal of Applied Youth Studies, Journal of Divorce and Remarriage, Journal of Family Issues, Marriage and Family Review, Social Justice Research, Sociological Inquiry, International Journal of Criminology and Sociology, and Sociological Viewpoints. He also serves on the international advisory board of Tambara at the Ateneo de Davao University in the Philippines.

Dr. Sviatlana Karpava

Department of English Studies, University of Cyprus, Cyprus;
Assistant Professor in Applied Linguistics/Multilingualism and Coordinator of the MA in TESOL program at the Department of English Studies, University of Cyprus. She is Co-Director of the Testing, Teaching and Translation Lab and the Discourse, Context and Society Lab, and Chair of the Cyprus Teachers of English Association. Dr Karpava is an MC member of CLILNetLE COST Action and WG member of the TraFaDy COST Action. Dr Karpava is the Editor of several volumes on multilingualism and heritage language development (BRILL, 2024; Springer, 2025). She has presented her research at numerous international conferences and published her research work in various peer-reviewed journals. Her area of research is applied linguistics, second/third language acquisition, bilingualism, multilingualism, sociolinguistics, teaching, and education.https://www.ucy.ac.cy/dir/en/cb-profile/skarpa01

Sponsors and Partners

Organizer

Webinar Recording

The webinar was hosted via Zoom and required registration to attend. The full recording can be found below. In order to learn about future webinars, you can sign up to our newsletter by clicking “Subscribe” at the top of the page.