ICSA International Conference 2027

The annual ICSA International Conference, brings together researchers, health professionals, service providers and survivors and their families from around the world to engage in open dialogue on the most pressing themes around cultic studies. 

We are excited to announce the location and theme for the 2027 event.

Location: Oslo, Norway

2027 Conference Theme: Shifting Ground: Coercion, Influence, and Control

The landscape of coercion, influence, and control is changing. Digital technologies are creating new avenues for manipulation, surveillance, exploitation, and control, raising particular concerns for children and young people.

While there is growing recognition that autonomy can be restricted in subtler ways through close relationships, social communities, group belonging, and authority structures, these forms of influence and control are often difficult to recognize, both for those affected and for the people around them.

At the same time, legal systems around the world are developing new ways of understanding and regulating coercion, consent, autonomy, and accountability.

The 2027 conference will examine emerging forms of digital influence and control, as well as developments in law and public policy. We welcome proposals addressing the full range of cultic and high-control environments and communities, as well as other interpersonal contexts in which coercion is perpetrated, including human trafficking, intimate partner violence, and gangs. Proposals may explore recovery and healing, prevention, research, professional practice, and lived experience.

We seek contributions that deepen understanding, encourage interdisciplinary dialogue, and identify effective ways to recognize coercion and control, reduce harm, support recovery, and strengthen individual and collective autonomy.

The ICSA International Conference brings together people with lived experience, families, researchers, clinicians, legal and policy professionals, educators, organizations, and others to explore how coercion, influence, and control emerge, are exercised, and are maintained across different contexts.