Meetings

The HRWG annual meeting is not your usual academic meeting. The group has developed a number of ways to discourage didactic lectures and encourage intensive group participation and problem solving on breaking issues. There are no simultaneous sessions. Participants do not present a paper and then leave, but are asked to attend for the entire meeting, where they sit facing each other around a circle or open square. A couple of weeks before the meeting, everyone receives a summary of each presentation; therefore, presenters can review only the main points in no more than half the allotted time, with the other half reserved for group discussion. Each session has a "moderator," whose job is to stimulate a lively discussion (or maintain general decorum when stimulation is unnecessary), and a "recorder," whose job is to record the discussion for publication in the Proceedings. To ensure that current findings and breaking issues find a place on the meeting's program, information can be presented in a variety of formats - formal presentations, works in progress, demonstrations, tutorials, and practitioner discussion groups. Sessions are of varying length, dependent on how long it takes to deal with the issue at hand. One result of these still-evolving "tribal customs" is that participant discussions build and develop over several days, with later discussions referring back to earlier presentations, and are often the most valuable part of the annual meeting.

2009 Annual Meeting

View the minutes from the two business meetings. [PDF]

The 2009 HRWG annual meeting will be held in Amherst Massachusetts from Wednesday, June 17 through noon Saturday, June 20, 2009. The conference will be sponsored by the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences and the Sociology Department of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

Conference Theme: Social and Structural Landscapes of Lethal Violence

Meeting Schedule

Wednesday, June 17
5:30 - 9:00pm: Guest Speaker & Opening Reception
Thursday, June 18
8:30am - 5:00pm: Meeting, Dinner at the Faculty Club
Friday, June 19
8:30am - 5:00pm: Meeting. Visit to the top of Mount Holyoke and dinner at local restaurants in Amherst or Northampton
Saturday June 20
9:00am - 12:00pm: Meeting

Conference Site

Conference sessions will be held at the Campus Center on the campus of University of Massachusetts-Amherst. Appropriately named, the Campus Center is located in the center of the campus. These photos show the hotel and conference center as it looks from the north end of the Campus Pond and a view of the campus from the 10th floor of the Campus Center.

Conference Hotel

Arrangements are for lodging at the University of Massachusetts Campus Center Hotel, Amherst MA 01002 (413-549-6000 Ext. 7714, www.aux.umass.edu/hotel) with a conference rate of $112 per night (single/double) for Wednesday and Thursday and $144 per night for Friday night. Do not forget to mention that you are with the Homicide Research Working Group! Reservations at the conference rate should be made by June 3, 2009. Thereafter, room reservations will be on a space availability basis. The Campus Center Hotel has a 48-hour cancellation policy.

Airport

We recommend flying to the Harford-Springfield Airport also called Bradley International Airport (BDL), located 50 miles from Amherst. To see more of Massachusetts, plan to fly in to Bradley, rent a car, and fly out of Boston after the meeting. Boston is 90 miles (about two hours) east of Amherst. An Amtrak train, The Vermonter, stops in Amherst on its way from Washington DC to northern Vermont. Anyone arriving for the meeting on The Vermonter on Wednesday, June 17, will be met at the station. Email <chilton@soc.umass.edu> when you have tickets on the Vermonter that will put you in Amherst on June 17, 2009.

Transportation from the Airport

The Valley Transporter, for a fee of about $50, provides door-to-door transportation from Bradley Airport to the Campus Center about every hour in June. See (www.valleytransporter.com) or call (413-253-1350) In addition, all major car rental companies are available for those who wish to have their own transportation. Parking at the Campus Center Garage is free for those staying at the Campus Center Hotel.

Call for Papers and Posters

Theme: Social and Structural Landscapes of Lethal Violence

The 2009 HRWG Annual Meeting theme, Social and Structural Landscapes of Lethal Violence, is especially relevant given the current economic conditions being experienced worldwide.

Thematic sessions will be scheduled for papers that focus on social and structural influences on lethal violence. Of course, all papers and posters that focus on theoretical issues, data/measurement issues, and policy/applied issues related to homicide and violence that may lead to homicide are welcome and will be reviewed for inclusion on the program.

If you are interested in organizing a paper session or have ideas for session topics focusing on social and/or structural influences on lethal violence for the upcoming conference, please contact Lin Huff-Corzine at lcorzine@mail.ucf.edu.

Please submit abstracts electronically to Lin Huff-Corzine, Program Chair, at lcorzine@mail.ucf.edu by Monday March 30, 2009.
Five-page summaries will be due to Lin Huff-Corzine by Monday May 18, 2009. After the June meeting, papers and recorders’ notes will be compiled into the Proceedings.

General Meeting Information

It is expected that presenters will attend and participate in the entire workshop, not just the panel in which they are delivering their paper. Since the goal is to learn from one another, and not merely to present our findings, at least half of each session will be devoted to discussion. In short, papers are not simply presented; they are also discussed.

The HRWG Poster Room is not your usual meeting poster session. We keep the posters available for review during the entire meeting, and there is a session devoted solely to the poster presentations as well.

Past HRWG Meetings

If you have comments or suggestions, email the HRWG at:
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