The Eight International Congress of Qualitative Inquiry will take place at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign from May 16-19, 2012.

The theme of the 2012 Congress is “Qualitative Inquiry as Global Endeavor”.

The 2012 Congress will offer scholars the opportunity to debate these issues, to foreground qualitative inquiry as a shared, global endeavor, while engaging the politics of advocacy, pro and con, to form coalitions, to engage in debate on how qualitative research can be used to advance the causes of social justice, while addressing racial, ethnic, gender and environmental disparities in education, welfare and healthcare.

Sessions will take up such topics as: the politics of advocacy; value-free inquiry; partisanship, bias; the politics of evidence; alternatives to evidence-based models; multiple and mixed-methods; public policy discourse; indigenous research ethics; decolonizing inquiry. Contributors are invited to experiment with traditional and new methodologies, with new presentational formats (ethnodrama, performance, poetry, autoethnography, fiction). Such work will offer guidelines and exemplars concerning advocacy, inquiry and social justice concerns.

Researchware cofounder Dr. Sharlene Hesse-Biber will be attending and would be happy to answer any questions you may have about Researchware's Simply Powerful Tools for Qualitative Research. Dr. Hesse-Biber is a member of the External Advisory Board for the ICQI and a member of the Pre-Coference Organization for Mixed Methods (along with John Creswell and Burke Johnson). Please feel free to catch her before or after her many events:

Wednesday, May 16th:
She is a co-organizer of the “Day in Mixed Methods” (along with John Creswell and Burke Johnson)
She is leading a discussion on three papers in a session called "Crossing Technology Divides", in room 404 Union from 1:30-2:30pm
She is a co-organizer of the Invited Plenary Session: Qualitative Approaches to Mixed Methods Research: Prospects and Issues, in Illini Room A from 2:45-3:45pm as well as the author of one of the papers discussed in that session.
She is the author/presenter of a paper in the session on Mixed Methods Pedagogy & the Praxis of Difference Research in Illini Room A from 4:00-5:00pm
She is a panelist on the Closing Plenary: Invited Panel, “What We Have Learned, and Where are We Going?”, Illini Room A from 5:15-6:00pm

Thursday, May 17th
She is giving a workshop on "Mixed and Emergent Methods Workshop" from 8:30–11:30am

Saturday, May 19th
She is presenting in the Plenary Session: "Debating the Digital Future of Qualitative Research: The Handbook of Emergent Technologies in Social Research" on Saturday from 9:30-10:50 in 407 Union

To learn more about the 8th International Congress and how to participate, please visit their website: (www.ICQI.org).