25th Australasian Centre for Social and Environmental Accounting Research (A-CSEAR) Conference 2026

Celebrating 25 Years of A-CSEAR: Accounting and Accountability in Times of Polycrisis

The Discipline of Accounting, Governance and Regulation at the University of Sydney Business School warmly invites you to the 25th Anniversary Australasian Centre for Social and Environmental Accounting Research (A-CSEAR) Conference and Early Scholars’ Colloquium, to be held in-person in Sydney, Australia.

As we celebrate a quarter-century of A-CSEAR scholarship, collegiality, and critical engagement, the 2026 conference theme, “Accounting and Accountability in Times of Polycrisis”, invites reflection on how our community responds to the multifaceted crises of our era.

We live in a time of polycrisis – a condition where multiple, interlinked crises (ecological, social, political, health, and economic) amplify one another in unpredictable ways. Climate crisis, biodiversity loss, growing inequalities, authoritarianism, digital surveillance, displacement, and the erosion of democratic institutions are no longer discrete events but overlapping disruptions. These crises demand renewed attention to how accounting and accountability shape, and are shaped by, the interdependencies of our fragile world.

As we mark A-CSEAR’s 25-year legacy, we invite critical, imaginative, and hopeful engagements with what accountability means in, and for, the polycrisis. What responsibilities do social and environmental accounting scholars hold in confronting intersecting injustices? How might our theories, methods, and practices evolve to foster care, resilience, and repair in times of planetary precarity? 

We welcome contributions that explore these and related questions, including (but not limited to): how accounting frames, reproduces, or challenges the interconnected nature of crises (climate, health, economic, racial, geopolitical); new and emergent forms of counter-accounting, shadow accounting, and dialogic accountability; accountability and the Anthropocene; accounting, inequality, and social justice; Indigenous, decolonial, feminist, and queer perspectives on accountability and resilience; digitalisation, AI, and data justice; accounting for care, solidarity, and repair; reflections on A-CSEAR’s 25-year journey; democracy, authoritarianism, and accountability; accounting in the context of climate collapse; class, wealth concentration, and the political economy of inequality; and knowledge equity and epistemic justice in global knowledge ecosystems. For further detail, please see the full Call for Papers.

We encourage conceptual, empirical, and methodological papers that broaden how we understand and practice accountability. We particularly welcome contributions from early career scholars, activists, and practitioners engaging with transformative forms of social, environmental, and sustainability accounting.

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