Proposals are sought for research papers to be presented at a workshop at the University of Pittsburgh in the fall of 2018. We invite researchers — particularly junior scholars, scholars from under-represented groups, and scholars from countries of the global South — to propose research papers that employ data we have collected in the Transnational Social Movement Organizations and Inter-Organizational Network Databases. These data are centered on transnational social movement organizations (TSMOs), a subset of international organizations with explicit aims to promote social or political change, but also consider how these groups are connected to international governmental organizations (IGOs) and other international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs).

Transnational social movement organizations have played significant roles in bringing diverse actors—including activists from the global South, indigenous peoples, peasants, and LGBTQ activists—into the global public arena and enhancing their political impacts. They have been linked to movements against the global trade system, rising inequality, environmental degradation, and government austerity. They have been instrumental in defending human rights and promoting equity and justice in the global political and economic order. We seek proposals for papers that will use elements of these databases to explore what these data tell us about the relationship between transnational activism and processes of global change. Do such organizations enhance diversity in global political spaces? How is the mobilization of less powerful political actors related to broader political processes and conflicts? How have changes in the relative power of key states impacted the networks of social movement actors and their relationships with the inter-state system? The conference will generate critical feedback on the draft papers, which will be edited for publication. Participants will contribute to our work to review and prepare the dataset for public distribution through the World Historical Dataverse at the University of Pittsburgh.

Abstracts of paper proposals are due on February 15, 2018. Please send to tsmoworkshop@riseup.net. Abstracts must specify the main research question/s the author/s will address as well as the primary variables and years of data author/s hope to employ in their investigations. Codebooks describing the data are linked from the main website page. We also provide references and links to our own work that are based on these and related data, and we encourage those submitting proposals to review this work to gain an understanding of how the data may be used. In your application, please include author/s’ names, institutional affiliation and rank (graduate student submissions are welcome). Also, please indicate if you have access to other sources of funding to support your travel to Pittsburgh for this workshop. We are working to raise funds to provide travel stipends and expect to be able to provide lodging and meals during the workshop for participants.

Project Organizers: Jackie Smith, Melanie Hughes, Samantha Plummer, and Basak Gemici, University of Pittsburgh

For further information about the project, please visit http://tsmoworkshop.wikispaces.com/