Call for Papers – Main Conference

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 that respond to complexity and uncertainty.
• Accountability and the Anthropocene: rethinking relationships between humans, non-humans, and ecological systems.
• Accounting, inequality, and social justice in times of intersecting crises.
• Indigenous, decolonial, feminist, and queer perspectives on accountability and resilience.
• Digitalisation, AI, and data justice: accounting in the algorithmic age.
• Accounting for care, solidarity, and repair amidst crisis fatigue.
• Reflections on A-CSEAR’s 25-year journey – past, present, and future trajectories for social and environmental accounting research.
• Democracy, authoritarianism, and accountability: examining how accounting practices are mobilised to enable, contest, or resist shifts in political power. 
• Accounting in the context of climate collapse: confronting irreversible ecological thresholds and the need for transformative, not merely adaptive forms of accountability. 
• Class, wealth concentration, and the political economy of inequality: interrogating how accounting, taxation, and valuation practices sustain or challenge extreme accumulations of power and privilege. 
• Knowledge equity and epistemic justice in the global knowledge ecosystems: scrutinising whose methods, voices, and forms of expertise shape accounting research and practice, and whose are marginalised or excluded. 

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.

Submission Process

In keeping with the A-CSEAR conference tradition, we invite two types of submissions:

1. Full papers (suggested limit of 8,000 words, excluding references); and
2. Work-in-progress abstracts (up to 300 words).

Authors submitting full papers should provide a complete manuscript by the submission deadline. Authors submitting a work-in-progress are invited to submit an extended abstract outlining their aims, framework, and preliminary findings.

All submissions should be made via the A-CSEAR 2026 online submission system found by clicking on the button below:

Key Dates

• Submission deadline: 25 August 2026 
• Notification of acceptance: 29 September 2026
• Early Scholars’ Colloquium: 2 December 2026
• Main Conference: 3 – 4 December 2026

Best Paper Awards

Awards will be presented to outstanding papers in the following categories:

1. Best Overall Paper
2. Best Early Career Researcher Paper
3. Best Paper with the Most Potential for Social Impact  

About A-CSEAR

The Australasian Centre for Social and Environmental Accounting Research (A-CSEAR) has, since its inception, provided a collegial space for dialogue, critical reflection, and action-oriented scholarship. As we commemorate 25 years of the A-CSEAR community, this conference offers an opportunity to honour our collective achievements, reflect on our responsibilities, and envision the next generation of social and environmental accounting research that can respond meaningfully to the complexities of a world in crisis.

We look forward to welcoming you to Sydney, Australia in December 2026 to celebrate 25 years of A-CSEAR and to collectively explore how accounting and accountability might navigate, resist, and reimagine life in the polycrisis.

For more information, please contact: [email protected]

References:

Andrew, J., & Baker, M. (2021). The general data protection regulation in the age of surveillance capitalism. Journal of Business Ethics, 565-578.

Jones, M. J., & Solomon, J. F. (2013). Problematising accounting for biodiversity. Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, 26(5), 668-687.

George, S., Twyford, E., & Tanima, F. A. (2024). Authoritarian neoliberalism and asylum seekers: The silencing of accounting and accountability in offshore detention centres. Journal of Business Ethics, 194(4), 861-885.

Haynes, K. (2020). Structural inequalities exposed by COVID-19 in the UK: the need for an accounting for care. Journal of Accounting & Organizational Change, 16(4), 637-642.

Lawrence, M., Homer-Dixon, T., Janzwood, S., Rockstöm, J., Renn, O., & Donges, J. F. (2024). Global polycrisis: the causal mechanisms of crisis entanglement. Global Sustainability, 7, e6.

Perkiss, S. (2024). Climate apartheid: the failures of accountability and climate justice. Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, 37(7/8), 1761-1794.

Pianezzi, D., Cinquini, L., Grossi, G., & Sargiacomo, M. (2022, April). Migration and the neoliberal state: accounting ethics in the Italian response to the refugee crisis. In Accounting Forum (Vol. 46, No. 2, pp. 134-159). Routledge.