The Paper Development Workshop (PDW) at the 2026 Japan QCA Conference offers researchers who use QCA in their domains the chance to present their work at various stages of development. The workshop comprises small roundtable sessions in which QCA paper developers can receive detailed, constructive feedback from QCA experts and discuss the methodological aspects of their projects intensively.

The Call for Abstracts is open to researchers from various domains who wish to share QCA experiences, exchange ideas, and develop their own QCA papers. The PDW at the 2026 Japan QCA Conference is an in-person event hosted by Waseda University in Tokyo.

Submission Procedure

Please submit your abstract (maximum 500 words) via the following online form by 14 August 2026 at the latest. Submitted abstracts will be reviewed by an expert panel and may not be accepted if they are at an earlier stage than applying QCA, or if they are purely conceptual rather than an empirical application of QCA. The panel will also evaluate the clarity of purpose and the methodological rigor of the study. Therefore, your abstract must declare your QCA-based research design, including: (1) your research question(s); (2) the analytical framework; (3) the strategy for collecting raw data and calibration in your cases; and (4) the reasons for using QCA to address your research gap. Within the word limit, you should provide detailed information on the data, such as the number of cases and conditions, as well as the empirical findings of your QCA study. You will be notified about the acceptance of your abstract around 31August 2026, at which point you will be invited to submit a full paper of no more than 8,000 words for presentation at the PDW.

Conference fee and travel grant

There is no conference fee for the 2026 Japan QCA conference. PhD students who have no or insufficient funding to travel to Tokyo may apply for a travel grant. Expect travel grants to not exceed 50,000 YEN. We will provide further details when we notify you of the decision regarding your abstract.

The conference programme

Participants are warmly invited to attend the plenary session, at which Carsten Schneider and Peer Fiss will deliver keynote speeches. There will also be an expert roundtable session discussing the progress of QCA practices, as well as panel sessions where participants can learn about the latest methodological developments in QCA.

Further information

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us by email to jqca2026@gmail.com.

We look forward to receiving your submissions for this Call for Papers.

Your Organizational Team,

Sho Niikawa (Kobe University)

Airo Hino (Waseda University)