Session Creation Guidelines

One of the main goals for LASA’s Congress is to enable the highest level of intellectual exchange from the social sciences and the humanities about Latin America and the Caribbean. An important condition to achieve this goal is ensuring that each of our congress sessions incorporates important degrees of diversity along several criteria. These include diverse institutional affiliations of panel participants, region where they are based, disciplinary, career stage, and gender diversity. Not all of these criteria can be present in each and all sessions but, where possible, they should be observed when organizing them.

A session constituted by presenters from the same institution is likely to get a low ranking or rejected. A minimum of two institutions should be represented in each session, and preferably more. Even when a session is focused on a single country, it may be possible to find diversity among presenters in terms of the countries in which they are based. Such diversity could add a different perspective on the same country. Having in the same session scholars in different stages of their careers, from graduate students to junior and senior scholars, can promote productive intellectual networks and possibilities for mentorship. Gender diversity should be easy to attain in an association in which women make up more than half of its membership.