INVEST Conference 2024: Digitalization, social inequality and behavioural change

15–17 May 2024
Turku, Finland

A few places left for Conference Dinner on Thursday May, 16. Please contact lakasis@utu.fi to register for the dinner.

Preliminary programme available!

The INVEST Conference is an interdisciplinary, international and high-level scientific conference. Bringing together researchers from different countries and disciplines, it is an excellent opportunity for scholars and professionals to learn about research in the field, expand their networks, deepen their knowledge and create new opportunities for collaboration.

The theme of the conference is Digitalization, social inequality and behavioural change. Digitalization is a very important social issue. It describes the spread of digital information technology into everyday functions and environments such as schools, workplaces and community services. It has the potential to offer a wide range of opportunities, but it can also be a major challenge, for example in terms of equality. Digitalization is linked to many of the major challenges of our time, such as marginalization, mental health and the collapse of the birth rate.

We have two visionary keynote speeches given by Vili Lehdonvirta, University of Oxford and Eva Serlachius, Karolinska Institutet. In addition, we will organise open science presentations for the whole audience. Parallel sessions will allow researchers to present their own ongoing work and receive valuable feedback from colleagues. The conference venue is at the University of Turku, Educarium building.

Important dates

• Call for papers opens 29 November 2023
• Call for papers deadline 9 February 2024
• Paper acceptance between 14-21 February 2024
• Early bird registration opens 14 February 2024
• Early bird registration closes on 16 March 2024
• Registration deadline 30 April 2024
• Dinner registration deadline 30 April 2024 (places left for the dinner, contact lakasis@utu.fi)
• Pre conference 15 May 2024
• Seminar 16–17 May 2024

Fields of study

The INVEST Conference is an interdisciplinary conference. For example, your research may represent one of the following disciplines:

• sociology
• social policy
• social work
• statistics
• economics
• political economy
• political science
• psychology
• child psychiatry
• demography
• epidemiology
• social pharmacy.

Open Science Track

INVEST is at the forefront of promoting the adoption of open science practices among its researchers. A key practice is pre-registration: researchers can publicly register their hypotheses, methods and analysis plans before conducting any analysis, ensuring complete transparency from the outset. This proactive measure not only discourages questionable research practices, but also increases the replicability of research and is strongly encouraged by scientific journals.

However, scientific conferences often still focus on presenting research results rather than on presenting research ideas (and encouraging peer feedback on these ideas). We want to change this by explicitly inviting researchers to present their pre-registrations to each other, so that colleagues can think along in their study from the start – rather than after the results are known. If you would like to submit a paper that would be suitable for the Open Science track, please tick the “Open Science” box on the submission form.

Prices

• Early Bird                                                            205€
• Early Bird Student                                             150€
• Registration after 16 March 2024                   245€
• Student registration after 16 March 2024    180€
• Conference dinner*                                          50€ (+VAT 24%)

*The Conference dinner will take place at Scandic Hamburger Börs. The dinner fee includes a three-course dinner and drinks.