Keynote 1: LSA 50th Anniversary Conference Panel – Justice in the face of polycrisis: The future of leisure?

Abstract

With the LSA celebrating 50 years in 2025, the importance of leisure within contemporary society has become ever more clear. However, access to and participation in leisure is unevenly distributed across global society, which is only exacerbated by the current global polycrisis across interconnected social, ecological, and spatial systems. Taking a justice-centered approach, and in acknowledgement of the systemic entangledness of justice and polycrisis, this session will focus on how we, as leisure scholars, can respond to this complexity conceptually, ethically and politically. To this end, this panel brings together leading international scholars representing a cross-section of international academic leisure organizations to discuss how we can build just approaches to leisure and in the future in the face of ongoing systemic polycrisis.