The Call for Abstracts is now open till 16 January 2026!
Please visit our Ex Ordo page to submit an abstract: https://isiesem26.exordo.com
Guide for Authors (also in Ex Ordo)
Please submit an abstract (max 600 words) for your contribution to the conference. Please make clear the context, your approach, your findings, and their significance for attendees at the ISIE-SEM conference and more widely.
It is important that your submission articulates a clear focus on the topics of Socio-Economic Metabolism (SEM) within Industrial Ecology. SEM research approaches major global and local challenges from the perspective of material and energy flows, stocks and processes. The conference will show research which has significance for:
- Reducing greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental impacts.
- Informing resilient and green industrial strategy and critical materials policies.
- Supporting local planning for resource-efficient, low-carbon urban metabolism.
- Moving towards circular economy / waste, recycling and resource management.
- Monitoring and analysis of progress towards a more sustainable SEM at site, company, sector, national or global scales.
- Systemic understanding of global trade, supply chains, lifecycles, and their embodied environmental impacts.
- Solutions which balance conflicting demands in the energy, climate, land and water nexus, and between economic, environmental and social sustainability.
- Other important challenges that benefit from a SEM perspective.
The work being presented at the conference may be sharing the results of applying established SEM methods, producing results with practical significance for one or more of these areas listed above, and/or it may present innovations in research method, tools or concepts which have significance for the field of SEM research. Examples include:
- High-resolution understanding of stocks (spatially, or more details about other aspects)
- Dynamic modelling and future development of stocks and services
- Linking mass/energy flows to environmental impacts
- Linking mass/energy flows to social/economic benefits and impacts
- Concepts and modelling of the stock-flow-service nexus
- Industrial symbiosis and eco-industrial development
- Linking SEM to agency, organisations, decision-making
- Open science / reproducible research practices in industrial ecology
- Uncertainty, sensitivity, and risk
- Innovations in modelling and data for SEM
- Issues of specific sectors or industries
- Innovations in communication and data visualisation
In 2026, we would like to highlight three overarching themes, which are timely given the challenges the world faces:
- Equity: of SEM research (open data, models, access, etc) and as a topic of study
- Agency: how can our research extend from being pure modelling exercises, to actually doing things in practice and in society? Who should be involved, and how do they make decisions? What analysis do they need to inform this?
- Urgency: how can SEM research tell us not only what is feasible or desirable in general, but what should we prioritise to make the short-term changes that are urgently needed?
Please include any essential references within the abstract (compact references with DOIs are acceptable).