Colleagues, I am pleased to announce the inaugural Meaning in Life and Work Preconference that will occur on February 20th, 2025 from 1-5pm MT at the annual Society for Personality and Social Psychology conference in Denver, Colorado. This preconference aims to bring researchers from OB (who study meaningful work) and psychology (who study meaning in life) into an exchange to see what we might learn from one another to advance our respective fields. The preconference will have speakers representing both traditions at the junior and senior level, including Jen Tosti-Kharas, Frank Martela, Laura King, David Melnikoff, Gabrielle Pfund, and Ben Rogers. More details about the preconference are included below.
We are reaching out to (a) warmly invite you to attend if you are interested and in the area, and (b) to consider submitting (or forwarding this information to someone you believe ought to submit) for a data blitz presentation.
Data Blitz Submissions
We are currently seeking submissions for data blitz presentations from graduate students, postdocs, and faculty at all levels. Our data blitz session will feature a series of brief (5 minutes max) research talks. Submissions can be broadly related to meaning in life and/or meaningful work. We strongly encourage submissions that will address the intersection of these topics. Abstracts can be submitted here https://spsp.wufoo.com/forms/2025-preconference-submission-portal/ between September 5 through October 17. Notifications of acceptance will be distributed beginning November 10th.
Preconference Details:
Scholarship on meaning has substantially grown over the past few decades, has demonstrated the importance of meaning to a variety of important outcomes including well-being, and has begun to identify critical antecedents of the experience of meaning. Unfortunately, however, research has co-occurred in two related but hitherto isolated fields: in psychology, researchers have focused on "meaning in life," whereas in management the focus has been on "meaningful work." This inaugural preconference on Meaning in Life and Work aims to bring scholars from both disciplines together to learn from each other and advance scholarship at the intersection of life with work.
Registration for the conference and preconference will open on October 10th. See this website for more details: https://spsp.org/events/annual-convention/registration
If you have questions, please contact Sarah Ward at sw2020@illinois.edu
Sarah Ward (she/her)
Assistant Professor of Business Administration
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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