Call for Submissions to the 2026 Guns in Society Annual Symposium

Deadline for Abstract Submission: October 15th, 2025

Arizona State University’s BRIDGS Initiative: Bringing Research and Innovation into the Debate on Guns in Society invites submissions to the Annual Symposium on February 26 and 27, 2026, at the downtown campus of Arizona State University in Phoenix, AZ.

Experiences and perspectives that frustrate the familiar terms of the current gun debate too often go untold. Organized around the theme of “The Gun Debate You Don’t Know: Hidden Stories of Guns in Society,” this symposium aims to unearth the underappreciated dynamics of guns in society through the lenses of social science and humanities research. We invite you to interrogate and engage in story-telling (how we narrate guns and how those narratives take on a life of their own) as key to understanding where we are in the gun debate and where we might go next. Who disrupts what counts as a “gun owner”? What gets written out of the recurring motifs of American self-defense? What kinds of gun harm are systematically left out of “gun violence”? How do our periodizing paradigms exclude certain forms of gun ownership from view? And why do we know so much about certain aspects of the American gun experience–and so little about others? This symposium invites work that foregrounds the messy, contradictory, and unexpected corners of the gun debate in ways that compel us rethink the terms through which we understand guns in society.

We welcome agenda-setting work on the culture and politics of armed self-defense; gun violence and gun trauma; guns, identity, and inequality;  guns, markets and the economy; social movements surrounding gun rights and/or gun control; comparative/transnational approaches to guns in society; the intersection of guns, conservation, and environmental justice; the role of art in shaping our relationships with guns; and related topics grounded in qualitative or quantitative social science approaches.

To submit an abstract, please complete this form by October 15th, 2025.

About the ASU BRIDGS Initiative. BRIDGS is an ASU initiative, founded in January 2024, aimed at supporting boundary-spanning social science and humanities research on guns in order to forge a forum for those across the debate to engage, learn, and elevate through research initiatives and public outreach. Learn more about BRIDGS, including the American Gun Experience Project, the BRIDGS Fellowship, and the Guns Unpacked Podcast at the BRIDGS website.

Symposium 2026 Call for Submissions