SABEL Conference

Event Details

Date: 8 - 10 September, 2026
Location: Parramatta City Campus (169 Macquarie Street, Parramatta NSW, 2150)

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Conference Overview

This year, on the occasion of the annual SABEL Conference, we intend to Bridge Disciplines to Empower and Enable Researchers, for that is the theme of this year's conference. During the three-day event in September, presentations will be given by members of Western Sydney University's faculties of Social Sciences, Arts, Business, Education and Law. These are intended to promote interdisciplinary understanding in order to enrich all concerned schools of thought, as well as to inspire postgraduate students and give them a sense of where their studies can take them.

Call for Papers

The SABEL Conference is an annual event intended to promote collaboration across the various academic disciplines that make up Western Sydney University's Faculty of Social Sciences, Arts, Business, Education and Law (SABEL). These being the most important of university disciplines (and, indeed, the only ones before universities in general made the fatal decisions that led to the neoliberalism we see today), the Faculty considers it useful for members of each to get together in order to present their research, that they might learn from each other, and thus develop their skill at being students and supervisors. Thus, the theme of this year's conference is 'Bridging Disciplines to Empower and Enable Researchers'.

All academics, supervisors and Higher Degree Research candidates involved in one (or more) of SABEL's disciplines are invited to submit papers for presentation at the conference, which will take place from 8 to 10 September 2026. These should showcase the interdisciplinary nature of the applicant’s work, and it will be particularly appreciated if presentations offer prospects for interdisciplinary research.

The presentation itself should last 15-20 minutes, and all presenters should be ready for a five- to ten-minute question-and-answer session afterwards. Naturally, it is expected that presentations will be verbal deliveries based on the speakers' respective papers, but considering Arts subjects are included, we make no presumptions about format! Nonetheless, this will be an in-person event only, at Western Sydney University's Parramatta City Campus.

Submission Inclusions:

• The title of your paper (even if, in some post-modernist effort, a paper does not have a title, the submitter is asked to use at least a placeholder title)
• An abstract - that is, a piece of writing to explain to the reader, before they have started reading, what the paper says - of no more than 200 words
• Your name
• A phone number on which you can be reached

Deadline for Submissions: 17 July 2026

Submit Abstract: sabel-conference2026@westernsydney.edu.au

The SABEL committee holds the creative output of Western Sydney University in very high regard, and looks forward to hearing them presented together during the Conference. In presenting this research, it is hoped that PhD students will find inspiration for their own research. It will thus be useful if speakers consider talking about the careers to which their PhD studies have led.