Social Theory in the Field of ELMA RIG
Convenors: Nidal Al Haj Sleiman, Karen Healey, Janet Hetherington and Claire Goodall
We would like to invite expressions of interest from BELMAS Members of the Social Theory in the Field of ELMA Research Interest Group to be part of a symposium submission to the 2027 BELMAS Annual Conference, which will take place Friday 9th – Sunday 11th July 2027 in Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK.
The title of the symposium is: ‘Are We Focusing on the Map Without Taking in the View? Why Educational Leadership Needs Social Theory’
Educational leadership is shaped by metrics, performance and what works, foregrounding visible outcomes while deeper structures of power and inequality remain obscured. This symposium asks what becomes possible when we travel with social theory. Theory changes the questions we ask, the evidence we value and the realities we see, enabling more critical, ethical and contextually responsive understandings of leadership.
Together we consider how theory helps us read the landscape, leave familiar paths, find our bearings and chart other routes.
Reading the landscape historically reveals how policy and practice are shaped by authority, privilege and inherited assumptions. It moves inquiry beyond whether a practice works to ask whose interests it serves, whose knowledge counts and why some directions appear inevitable.
Leaving familiar paths creates critical distance from everyday routines. Social theory helps us question power, position and place, revealing what leadership practices and institutional habits produce, normalise or conceal. The familiar becomes open to scrutiny.
Finding our bearings requires locating ourselves within the worlds we practice and research. Biography, professional experience, institutional location and relationships shape which questions matter, whose knowledge is recognised and which interpretations persuade.
Charting other routes turns critique towards possibilities. Rather than asking only “What works?”, we ask: for whom, in what context, according to whose definition of success, at whose expense and towards what future? Our position shapes knowledge and ethical responsibilities and opens alternatives grounded in context and reflexivity.
Together, we challenge the reduction of educational leadership to technical implementation, illuminating current arrangements that are historically, culturally and socially produced We expose complicity while opening space for more just leadership and inquiry. We offer no definitive map, but resources for travelling differently. We invite you to slow down and think with theory to navigate complexity, question established routes and imagine alternatives.
Your expression of interest should include:
Papers should be designed as complementary perspectives on the shared symposium theme, drawing on theory as an aid to helping us read the landscape, leave familiar paths, find our bearings and chart other routes. Your paper can speak to one or more of these.
Please send expressions of interest and enquiries to: karen.healey@manchester.ac.uk
Expression of interest deadline: Midnight (GMT) on Thursday 22nd October 2026
Notification of inclusion: Friday 6th November 2026
BELMAS symposium submission deadline: Midnight (GMT) on Sunday 29th November 2026
Contributors should be available to present at any point during the 2027 BELMAS Annual Conference. The final abstracts for the symposium will be submitted through the BELMAS Conference Ex-Ordo system in accordance with the 2027 Guide for Authors.
