IPC2017 scientific programme

Preparations for IPC 2017 in Cape Town, South Africa are in full swing. At the 13-14 April meeting of the International Organising Committee (IOC) in Paris, the preliminary scientific programme was approved and plans for special sessions and plenaries were made in collaboration with National Organising Committee (NOC) members from Statistics South Africa, and representatives from UNFPA and the United Nations Population Division. On 15 April authors were notified of paper acceptances and registration and travel assistance applications for the Conference opened on the IUSSP website. All those interested in population research are invited to register to attend the conference.

For the 2017 Conference there will be 240 session slots and room for approximately 1,000 posters. Some 216 session slots have been allocated for papers submitted via the Call for Papers including 8 session slots for the African Population Day organized by the NOC. The IUSSP set aside up to 20 session slots for Sponsored Research Leader Sessions, which are offered to organizations who contribute a minimum of $10,000. Given the large number of submissions, organizers had to waitlist or assign to the poster sessions many excellent papers. 

All presenting authors of a communication were requested to register online by 15 June,. A request for financial support was also considered temporarily as a means to secure the paper’s place on the programme. Papers whose presenting author had not registered by 15 June will be removed from the programme so that authors of waitlisted papers can be invited as replacements with enough lead time to secure funding. Sessions with fewer than 3 papers will be merged with other sessions. A tentative programme is available on the conference website. It will be updated regularly as cancelled papers are replaced by waitlisted papers.    

The IUSSP has now made decisions on travel support for participants on the programme. Over 700 IUSSP members submitted an application by the 15 May deadline.  Unfortunately travel funding for the 2017 International Population Conference is very limited and we were able to offer funding only to 183 presenting authors, chairs, and discussants from middle- and low-income countries in regular sessions.  Travel support was provided thanks to funding from UNFPA, Wellcome Trust, a grant made to support scholars involved in the Population and Poverty (PopPov) Research Network, and funds received from organizations who are sponsoring Research Leader Sessions. The IUSSP Council also voted to contribute a significant amount of reserve funds to support travel grants. The NOC plans to fund an additional 50-100 participants. The IOC hopes in the end to be able to offer at least partial funding to all presenting authors of an oral communication on the programme from middle- and low-income countries who need funding to attend. We regret, however, that we are currently unable to fund presenting authors of many of the excellent papers that were accepted as posters. We thank the many participants, and their institutions, who have been able to secure their own funding to register and attend the Conference.

There are now over 1,200 people registered to participate in the Conference and we expect many more before the expiration of the reduced registration fees on 15 September 2017. Please check the Conference website for more information on side meetings, exhibits, plenary sessions and training events that will be organized before and during the Conference. The sessions will be scheduled at the end June and the Conference schedule should be available online by early July. We look forward to seeing as many of you as possible in October in Cape Town.