Home               Conference theme               Call for Papers               Photo Gallery               Keynote speakers               Important dates               Programme               Practical information               Committees               Contact		Conference theme The notion of participation has been largely used through several disciplines inspired by the concept of participation framework proposed by Goffman (1981). Within conversation analysis, the issue of participation has been discussed early on (see for example Drew & Wootton, 1988). More recently, it has been revisited within an embodied perspective (see Goodwin & Goodwin, 2004), revealing its dynamic, changing and complex organization, as well as the importance for its organization of multimodal resources, specific formats, and changing configurations. Studies of phenomena related to the organization of turn-taking in multi-party interactions have raised issues of how recipient-design and orientation to the co-participants are organized and change moment by moment along the sequentiality of talk and action. Studies of phenomena related to sequence organization and action formatting have raised issues concerning formats that enable, craft, afford specific forms of participation in various activities and settings. This conference addresses the notion of participation in two important ways: a) It aims at discussing the notion from a conversation analytic perspective, taking into account both the sequential organization of action and the variety of resources (linguistic as well as embodied) for the organization of that action; b) It aims at offering a large range of empirical analyses showing how issues of participation emerge and are addressed in various settings, including ordinary conversation, institutional encounters and professional interactions. For example, issues of participation are key in service to users, medical consultations, the life of aphasic patients in their families, the expression of citizens in democratic meetings, the contributions of students in classroom, etc. More specifically, the conference is organized around 3 thematic areas: i) How different modes of organization of turn-taking (concerning both turn allocation and turn formatting) in multi-party interaction configure opportunities to participate; ii) How action formation and the specific organization of sequential environments shape participation, for example enabling and crafting it, as well as constraining and reducing it; iii)    How participation issues emerge in particular contexts of activity, shaping and being shaped by a reflexive orientation towards specific contexts and locally relevant membership categorization devices.