BYU Law Review

BYU Law Review 2026 Symposium: Researching Vulnerable Communities

Provo, UT | Nov. 12-13, 2026

Behind every research study of poverty, incarceration, immigration, disability, or victimization are real people who agreed to be studied — often at some personal risk. How researchers enter those relationships, and what they owe the people in them, deserves far more attention than legal scholarship has given it.

The 2026 BYU Law Review Symposium brings together scholars to examine the ethical, methodological, and institutional dimensions of research involving vulnerable populations. We welcome submissions from scholars employing a range of methodologies, including participatory action research, qualitative interviews, survey research, ethnography, mixed methods, and other community-engaged approaches. Potential topics could include strategies for elevating the voices of system-impacted individuals, strength-based frameworks, approaches to navigating power imbalances and cross-cultural dynamics, practices that cultivate authentic connection, and forms of researcher reflexivity that deepen accountability to the communities studied.

The 2026 Symposium will be held in person in Provo, UT starting the afternoon of Thursday, Nov. 12 and Friday, Nov. 13, 2026. If interested in participating, submit a CV and an abstract (no more than 500 words) by May 1, 2026. Selections will be made by May 15. Accepted participants will receive travel stipends to present in Provo in November. Final papers (of no more than 15,000 words) will be due Dec. 31, 2026 and published in the BYU Law Review in 2027.

Questions & submissions: Elle McConkie, Chief Symposium Editor - lawreviewsymposium@law.byu.edu