In an increasingly globalized world, countries constantly strive to enhance their competitiveness and productivity to achieve sustainable growth. However, failure to consider the interdependent and dynamic processes that regulate the relationship between competitiveness, productivity, and economic growth sometimes results in situations like "productivity paradox", "competitiveness" and "race to the bottom". Thus policies aiming to increase competitiveness and productivity can backfire on economic growth due to declining wages, labor exploitation, worsening working conditions, and declining aggregate domestic consumption. Papers in this section would appreciate the complexity involved in the relationship between competitiveness, productivity, and economic growth variables by taking into account the role that innovation and technology adoption, human capital development, and regulatory environment play. In doing so, shall identify best practices and strategies to deal with the complexity involved in this area of economic inquiry.

Monetary policy is a key tool used by central banks to manage inflation and stabilize the economy. However, to the extent which these policies are successful in attaining this goal may depend on complex and non-linear processes involving the responsiveness of consumers and businesses to the changes in interest rates, the level of economic activity, and the structure of any economy. The session will examine the effectiveness of various monetary policy tools and transmission mechanisms in controlling inflation and promoting economic growth. Additionally, this theme will cover studies on the impact of inflation on different sectors of the economy, such as households, businesses, and financial institutions. Papers on the social footprints of monetary policy as well as on the distributional impact of inflation are highly encouraged.

Uncovering meaningful insights from large and complex economic datasets is a crucial task for economists and itself a challenge to linearity and opportunity to unearth complex and nuanced insights into social and economic phenomena. Traditional statistical methods may struggle to capture the complex relationships between economic variables such as social media and advertisement and consumer behavior. However, economists can use big data to identify trends and patterns to better understand economic systems and machine learning algorithms can make accurate predictions to inform economic policy decisions. Overall, the use of machine learning, AI, and big data presents both exciting opportunities and challenges for economists and social and data scientists to dare study non-linear relationships governing social and economic exchanges. Papers addressing and appreciating such issues are particularly welcomed under this theme.

Inequality is a paradox and has a very complex relationship with economic and social progress. While some level of inequality that originates from the level of effort one puts into an economic activity may be good for the economic development of societies, the inequality that originates from circumstances beyond control needs serious attention. The concept of equalizing opportunities refers to creating a level playing field for individuals, regardless of their socio-economic background. Education, health, skills, and labor market inequalities are key factors that can impact an individual's opportunities in life. Addressing these inequalities is crucial for promoting social mobility and ensuring that everyone has a fair chance to succeed. The policies targeting the linear relationship between economic growth, employment generation, and upward social mobility may simply fail in the absence of a deeper understanding of complex structural factors that perpetuate inequality and hinder marginalized groups' access to health, education, and financial and economic opportunities. Papers dealing with the complexities involved in recognizing, understanding, and addressing structural inequalities for and enhancing our would be welcomed under this theme.

The technical session on Psychology welcomes researchers, professionals, students, and community members to co-create and share knowledge on the prevailing contextual and localized trends in the field of psychology. The session focuses on highlighting research-based insights into various sub-domains of psychology such as clinical, counseling, social, behavioral, health, community, and environmental psychology. Another important area for the session would be the domain of psychometrics where we encourage researchers to present their findings on psychometric evaluations of various psychological tests and measures in the local context and populations within Pakistan. The session aims to develop linkages between psychology and other disciplines to facilitate discussion on multiple perspectives through which human behavior and psychological phenomena can be understood. Interventions, research designs, clinical trials, and theoretical formulations which have been adapted from the Global North do not provide us with a holistic understanding of dynamics operational in the local context. Thus, this session aims at initiating thought-provoking and evidence-based discussion in multiple domains of psychology.

How do domestic political actors influence international processes? How do the media, interest groups, and national institutions interact to form public opinion? How do transnational pressures inform domestic policies? How do political parties negotiate with non-political actors? These and many other questions like them show that political processes take place within changing social and economic considerations. As political processes become increasingly intertwined, there is a need to question existing theoretical frameworks and models and particularly the assumptions of linearity. Our training often encourages us to deconstruct problems in small rational parts, leading to probabilistic predictions. However, a linear approach to problem-solving can lead to simple conclusions that ignore potentially relevant information that is sometimes outside traditional frameworks. A shift to complexity does not necessarily mean a change in methods, but a willingness to accept uncertainty, to think of processes behind 'unexpected outcomes', and to link phenomena that may have been overlooked in the literature. Keeping these ideas in mind, we invite papers on topics in International Relations, Comparative Politics, Political Philosophy, or a related Political Science subfield to be submitted under the Politics theme.

Scholarship emerging from and about local media and related social formations in the Global South counter privileged Eurocentric approaches, methodologies, and epistemologies in media and communication studies as they consider colonial histories, postcolonial logics, global and local inequalities, and specific social, political, economic, and cultural contexts. This subtheme of the conference invites contributions that challenge linearity and philosophical impositions of the West while addressing the following questions: How do we rethink media and related social formations in the context of local economic, developmental, infrastructural, political, and socio-cultural realities and norms of the regions in the Global South? How do studies of media and culture in the Global South differ from and challenge the dominant theories, methods, and epistemologies? How do media function differently in the Global South and how do they respond to and shape local and global realities? What are some of the unique aspects of advertising, photography, TV, film, and digital media and media infrastructures in the Global South? How do media aesthetics, modes of production, and dynamics of reception challenge dominant media theories and frameworks?

Security is perhaps one of the areas where the redundancy of linear thinking is more explicit and observable than others. Until the 20th century, the definition of security was quite straightforward and related to interstate military conflicts. Securitization has emerged most complex issue in the 21st century embracing a wider definition of security including but not limited to security concerns related to climate change and environmental degradation, energy and nuclear, water and other natural resources, food cyberspace, economic interdependence, pandemics, and migrant inflows. The non-traditional security concerns involve a wide range of state and non-state actors and then means of their communication and financing, networks, resources, tools, strategies, and stakes which may range from very local, and transnational to global requiring a different form of governance. Papers under this subtheme shall address the questions related to issues such as the nature of non-traditional security threats that we face today, the nexus between traditional and non-traditional security, the roles that state, bi-and multi-lateral institutions, networks, communities, and individuals play in creating or addressing a non-traditional security threat, gender- age- disability- incomes and locational disaggregated impact of NTST, use of technology in addressing NTST, etc.

The interdependence and Interconnectedness of Food, Water, and Energy resources is one of the major links through which human-environment interaction takes shape at various levels. A decision related to one of these will intricately impact the other two in highly complex and multifaceted ways. Recent research originating from several disciplines including but not limited to anthropology, sociology, ecology, geology, geography, and archeology may offer useful insights into complex exchanges that takes place between social–natural systems while enabling society to meet their food, water, and energy demands. Papers under this theme will relate to ways to make food affordable and accessible to everyone without further environmental degradation, balancing sectoral energy and water demands through complex trade-offs, resource use efficiency, equity and productivity, and use of technology in managing this nexus according to the principles of sustainable development.