IASC 2025 - XX Biennial Conference

20th Biennial Conference of The International Association for the Study of the Commons

June 16—20, 2025
University of Massachusetts, Amherst, USA

Regenerating the Commons:

Addressing Pressing Concerns Through Learning about the Past and Innovating into the Future

IMPORTANT NEWS

New update! Panel Proposals acceptances will be announced very soon!
- The review by the Program Committee is nearly complete. Thanks to everyone for their service.
New Update! The Call for Contributions (papers, presentations, posters) will be available on this website in the next week.
US VISAS!!!! Don’t wait! Start the process NOW! Visit this document for more information on the process.
The Conference Subthemes and the Conference Program Committee members associated with those themes can be found here. Thank you to the Program Committee for their service!
While we hope people will attend in person, we will be providing an online participation option. More information to follow later this year.

CONFERENCE OVERVIEW

The International Association of the Study of the Commons (“IASC”) is the leading professional association dedicated to research and practice around “the Commons”. The association, founded in 1989, is devoted to bringing together multi-disciplinary researchers, practitioners, and policymakers for the purpose of improving governance and management, advancing understanding, and creating sustainable solutions for commons, common-pool resources, or any other form of shared resource. These resources may be part of the natural world (e.g. forests, water, fish stock, climate systems) or they may be created (e.g. infrastructures such as irrigation systems, digitally stored knowledge, or technologies such as open source software, hardware or blockchain systems.

The first in-person IASC International Conference was held at Duke University in North America in September 1990. The conference moves every two years to a different continent. More recently, it was Europe in 2017 (the University of Utrecht, the Netherlands), South America (Pontifical Catholic University of Peru in Lima, Peru) in 2019, and after a pandemic delay of in-person events in 2021, Africa (University of Nairobi in Kenya) in 2023. The next biennial conference will be at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in the United States on June 16-20th, 2025.

Scroll down to see a timeline of key dates ahead.

TIMELINE

The conference program and other activities such as pre-conference workshops and post-conference excursions are still being developed. Below are key conference-planning milestones ahead:

April 2024. Program Committee finalized – DONE!
May 2024. Conference themes finalized – DONE!
June 2024. Call for Panel Abstracts announced — DONE!
August 1, 2024. Call for Panels Abstracts due — DONE!
NEXT UP: Approximately September 10, 2024. Call for Contributions announced – due date Oct 10th.
October 10th, 2024. Call for Contributions (Papers, Presentations, Poster) abstracts due, via this website.
October 31, 2024. Papers, Presentation and Poster acceptances communicated so people can begin to make travel arrangements (e.g., visas, flights, etc.). Travel information (e.g., US visa application information) and accommodations posted to this website.
November 15th, 2024. Panels placed on in person room timetable and online timetable and these are communicated to all accepted participants.
June 14th – 15th, 2025. Pre-conference events and workshops.
June 16-20th 2025. Conference!
June 21-22nd 2025. Post-Conference Excursions.

Conference Format

In addition to traditional panels, presentations and posters, IASC conferences always include one day of regional excursions for conference attendees. There will be pre-event training workshops on research methods and commons governance practice on June 15th, 2025.

As is IASC conference tradition, there will be one day of regional excursions for conference attendees on June 19th and post-conference longer excursions (likely to NY City and to Boston, and possibly the White Mountains).

a SPONSORShip opportunity!

We estimate the full conference cost to be in the range of $215,000. We are actively looking for conference sponsorship to help keep conference costs low for the participants, many of whom are coming from low- and middle-income countries. Moreover, we seek funding not only to cover conference costs, but also to raise money for fellowships for early-career scholars and IASC members with financial need and enable more equitable global participation.

We welcome assistance from IASC members to help us fundraise to keep conference costs to participants as low as possible. Now is the time to raise funds and here’s how you can help:

Academics:
- Ask your department chair or dean if your unit could donate $1000 and we will promote your academic program or university on the website and at the conference itself. This is a unique opportunity to get your program’s name visible to people across the globe!

- Go after a grant that has a line-item to support conference participation and/or a conference track. The time to do this is now! (Please contact us — see below — if you need help with that or a letter of support).

All IASC members:

- Reach out to any organization you know who might be willing to or interested in supporting this conference or IASC in general. For example, those who provide funding to support opportunities for graduate students, practitioners, and people coming from low- and middle-income countries. Contact the organizers (see below) if we can help. Again, from a sponsor standpoint, this is a unique opportunity to get their name advertised to participants from all over the world!
- Consider donating a small amount yourself to help lower the costs of the conference to conference registrants. Any amount helps! See the Donate Now button below.
Questions? Email conference co-organizer Charlie Schweik at cschweik@umass.edu. Put “IASC 2025” in the subject line.