Dear colleagues,

As former contributors to ERSA Congress programme, we cordially invite you to submit proposals for Special Sessions for next year's Congress which will take place from 27- 30 August, 2019 in Lyon, France.
Special Sessions must be related to the congress theme "Cities, regions and digital transformations: Opportunities, risks and challenges” or especially hot topics within the congress scope. We also have the ambition to have a stronger interdisciplinary dimension featuring contributions from social sciences, engineering and big data.

The submission deadline: December 7th, 2018

The special Session proposals must be submitted using the following online submission form. Please note that, in addition to contact information of the primary convenor, names of any co-convenors, the title, and description of the Special Session, we also ask you to list three interested presenters in your submission form.  Please also read below the guidelines for ERSA2019 Special Sessions or visit the Congress website.

We look forward to receiving your proposals for Special Sessions. Should you have any questions, please contact us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .

Louafi Bouzouina and Dominique Mignot, Co-chairs of the Local Organising Committee

Guidelines for special sessions

What do we offer?
Special Sessions are a label of quality in the ERSA congress and we accommodate for this in several ways:
• We aim to allow 30 minutes for each presentation slot in a Special Session
• Each presentation in a Special Session will be assigned a discussant

What do we ask?
• Each Special Session has a minimum of 4 registered presenters
• Presenters apply for a special session on the basis of a (draft) paper or an extended abstract (deadline February 28th 2019)
• Presentations scheduled in special sessions are based on a (draft) paper that has been uploaded on the ERSA 2019 submission website before June 10th 2019
• If a Special Session does not meet the conditions, it will still be included in the programme, labelled as an O-session.