The International Human Sciences Research Conference (IHSRC) first met in 1982 at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA. Since then it has met annually in over ten different countries and we are proud to be hosting the 30th IHSRC in the UK in 2011.

The conference is an opportunity to explore the use of qualitative methods in the study of human nature. There has been a strong phenomenological tradition at the heart of the IHSRC but researchers from other qualitative traditions also frequently attend and are very welcome.

Indeed, constructive dialogue and debate across a broad spectrum of qualitative perspectives has very much been central to the Human Sciences tradition. Naming the conference 'Human Sciences' back in 1982 was provocative and remains so today but as Giorgi (2010) puts it in his historical account of the conference: "the idea of science was to be preserved because no contradiction was perceived between science and qualitative methods even if the sense of rigor in studying qualitative aspects of phenomena would be different".

Participants are welcome from all disciplines, whether this be psychology, education, sociology, nursing or any other relevant disciplinary tradition, in which researchers seek to qualitatively explore human meaning and experience.

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