In March 2026, scholars from around the world will gather in Oxford for the PSA26 Annual Conference, one of the most significant events in political studies. Hosted across the historic Examination Schools, St Catherine’s College, and Wadham College, PSA26 brings together researchers, practitioners, and students to explore this year’s theme: “Political Studies Futures.” With more than 200 panels and a vibrant international community, the conference offers a unique space to interrogate the political challenges shaping our rapidly changing world.

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At PSA26, I will present my paper “Green vs. green: Defining the Tensions between Ecologism and Environmentalism in Green Political Thought.” This work examines a persistent ideological fracture within Green parties: the divide between technocratic environmentalism (“green”) and systemic, biocentric ecologism (“Green”). Drawing on Richardson & Rootes, Doherty, Saward, and Barry, the paper maps how competing ontologies of nature, citizenship, and governance generate internal conflict, often undermining party coherence and electoral success. By tracing tensions between romanticism and rationality, grassroots democracy and civic republicanism, I argue that these unresolved contradictions continue to limit the political effectiveness of Green movements at a moment when their leadership is urgently needed.

The 2026 Canadian Political Science Association (CPSA) Annual Conference will take place at the University of Ottawa, on the unceded territory of the Omamìwìnini Anishnàbeg (Algonquin) Nation. This year’s theme, “The Politics of Division: Conflict, Community, Curriculum,” invites scholars to examine how fractures (political, social, epistemic) are reshaping governance and public life in a global moment increasingly defined as a “hinge point”. With divisions intensifying across geopolitical landscapes, democratic institutions, and even university classrooms, CPSA 2026 asks political scientists to confront how these tensions shape both the world and the discipline.

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At CPSA, I will present “Negotiating Gender in a Divided Climate Regime: Symbolic Interactionism and the Gender Action Plan at COP30.” This paper analyzes the contentious renewal of the Gender Action Plan at COP30, where negotiations stalled over definitions of gender and sexual and reproductive health and rights. Using symbolic interactionism, negotiated order theory, and governmentality, the paper traces how delegations assigned competing meanings to key terms, how consensus was manufactured through strategic omission, and how institutional constraints narrowed the boundaries of acceptable discourse. In a climate regime increasingly marked by polarization, the erasure of feminist language in the GAP reveals deeper ideological fractures that threaten the transformative potential of climate justice.

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This contribution aligns closely with CPSA’s call to interrogate division as both a political reality and a site of scholarly responsibility.

The Canadian Sociological Association’s 2026 conference, "Harbours of Hope: Sociology in a Divided World", convenes scholars at Dalhousie University in Halifax from June 10–13. Set against the Atlantic backdrop of the Bedford Basin, the theme invites sociologists to explore how dialogue and research can bridge divides amid global polarization and geopolitical tension. The conference foregrounds Halifax’s maritime setting as a metaphor for connection and resilience, as well as harbours as spaces of refuge and exchange.

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Within this broader program, the session Institutional Ethnography and Critical Policy Analysis I brings together researchers using institutional ethnography to interrogate how policy and governance shape everyday life. Presentations span health care, immigration, education, housing, sex work, and environmental policy, tracing how ruling relations and institutional texts organize social realities across Canada and beyond.

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My paper, Gender, Governance, and Textual Power: Institutional Ethnography at COP30, applies Dorothy Smith’s framework of ruling relations and textual activation to the Gender Action Plan negotiations at COP30 in Belém. Through fieldnotes and autoethnographic reflection, it examines how competing definitions of “gender” were negotiated and erased, revealing how climate governance regulates social relations. By following the movement from textualization to activation, the analysis exposes the disconnect between lived experiences and institutional logics in global climate policy. The work argues for climate policy analysis that centers lived relations rather than abstract consensus, an ethnography of governance that makes visible the power embedded in text.