June 23-25 2026
University of Edinburgh
We are excited to announce that the Second Biennial Conference of the Society for the Study of Measurement will be held at the University of Edinburgh June 23-25, 2026. We are delighted to announce that Professor Jana Uher (Greenwich) will be our keynote speaker and that Professor Luca Mari (Università Carlo Cattaneo – LIUC) will be giving the society’s inaugural presidential address. The program will feature 45 papers, 3 symposia, and 18 posters. You can download a printable copy of the program here.
SSM 2026 Programme
Edinburgh Business School, 29 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh EH8 9JS
Day 1 — Tuesday 23 June 2026
08:45–09:10 · Registration
09:10–10:40 · Parallel Sessions
- Henry Weatherburn — From Falsifiability to Procedural Realism: Measurement, Audit, and Operational Epistemology in Contemporary Science
- Lucy Mason — Methodological Intersubjectivity
- Femke Truijens — What Is It Like to Score a Questionnaire on Lived Experiences?
- Hannah Loret — Pain in Any Language: Measuring abjection and appropriation of women’s sexual pain experiences in France and England
- Morgan Thompson — Patient-Centered Measures and the Problem of Normalization
11:00–12:30 · Keynote (Auditorium)
13:30–15:00 · Parallel Sessions
- Carlos Andrés González Sierra — A Semiotic Account of Transduction in Measurement: An Approach to Information-Theoretic Accounts of Measurement from the Perspective of Peirce’s Theory of Information
- Alisa Bokulich — Measurement and the Polysemy of Height
- Bernardo Marques — A Functionalist Theory of Measurement
- Kevin Weinfurt — Reflections on (New) Terms Used by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to Describe Health Assessments and Inferences
- Jasmine Folz — “The data is a shadow”: ethnographic explorations of infectious disease modelling
- Gabriel Heinrichs — Measuring through social deliberation: multi-stakeholder peer review panels evaluating higher education quality
15:30–17:00 · Parallel Sessions
- Timothée Cabos — Overcoming measurand and scale incommensurability: the case of climate satellite remote sensing
- Götz Hoeppe — Ground truth at the margins of measurement
- David Lowry and Nicole Brewer-Lowry — Using a Mixed Methods Approach and Cultural Models Theory to Develop a Grounded Instrument to Assess Indigenous Historical Trauma and its Impact on American Indian/Alaska Native Health Disparities
- Vandana Chaudhry — Biopolitics of Disability Measurement and Digitalization in India
- Thomas Bonnin — Measuring the Built Environment: The Construction of Indicators
Day 2 — Wednesday 24 June 2026
08:40–09:00 · Registration
09:00–10:30 · Parallel Sessions
- Jolien Francken — A philosophical toolbox for improving measurement in cognitive neuroscience
- Nia Kang — Valid, but for whom? Rethinking instrument validation through end-user calibration
- Johanna Silva-Stüger — Measuring Psychotherapy Effects — Or Why the Dodo Does not Fly
- Ave Mets — An almost mundane measurement: rate of turn
- Matěj Krátký — Operationalising Algebras of Observables
- Arthur Wei-Kang Liu — Making Time Anew: Redefining the Second and Its Consequences
10:55–12:25 · Parallel Sessions
- José Vicente Hernández Conde and María Caamaño Alegre — Reliability before validity: On the methodological preconditions of evidence
- David Torres Irribarra and Luca Mari — Validity and Uncertainty: Two worlds, one concept?
- Julien Tricard — Playing Ozma Games with Kibble Balances: a new defense of Absolutism about mass
- Eran Tal — When is Measurement Good? Evidence, Validity, and Values
- Alessandra Basso — Forms of Value-Ladenness in Inequality Measurement
- Sebastian Rodriguez Duque & Rosa W. Runhardt — An Ethical Framework for Reactivity to Measurement
12:25–13:50 · Lunch & Poster Session (Concourse)
- Elif Celikors — The Ground Truth of Feeling: Against Strong Constructivism in Emotion Science
- Thomas Ciavatti — Semiquantitative Measurement in Near Field Microscopy: a Case for Moderate Realism
- Gabrielle Gauthier-Gagné — Measuring the Landscape of Causal Inference Literature: A Topic Modeling and Bibliometric Study
- Itamar Kastner — How degrading: What we measure when we grade student work
- Yun-Ying Kuo — Measurement as epistemic scaffolding: The role of patient-centered measurement in clinical practice
13:55–15:25 · Parallel Sessions
- Patrick Ferree — Measuring the organism: Ground truth and the single-cell cartographers
- Alan Love — Measuring Biological Function in Biomechanics: Observations and Consequences
- Federica Bocchi — Virtues and Trade-offs in Selecting Biodiversity Metrics within a Global Institutional Framework
- Derek Briggs — Is Measurement a Necessity for the Development of Artificial General Intelligence or Are We Just Making a Bad Joke?
- Matthew Valiquette — Towards a Culture of Quantification: Value-Capture in Machine-Learning
15:30–17:00 · Parallel Sessions
- Stefan Cano — Can Artificial Intelligence Find Ground Truth? Conceptual Models and Validity in Patient-Centred Outcome Measurement
- Leah McClimans — Rethinking Coordination for Patient-Centered Outcome Measures
- Michael Dickson — PANSSing for Gold: The Relation between Inter-rater Reliability and Criterion Validity in the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale
- Russell Almond — Measurement in Dynamic Contexts
- Vera Matarese — On the conditions of successful measurement: measuring with noise
- Andre Curtis-Trudel — Deep learning and discovery in noise-dominated measurement regimes, with a case study from gravitational-wave astronomy
Day 3 — Thursday 25 June 2026
09:00–10:00 · Symposium 3 (Lecture Theatre 3)
- Michele Luchetti — Beyond Quantification: Psychophysical Measurement and Sensory Training in the Early Twentieth Century
- Niall Roe — Measuring What We Make: From Observational Error to Experimental Object
10:05–11:10 · Parallel Sessions
- Alistair Isaac — Measuring Attitudes, from Thurstone to Likert
- Claudia Cristalli — Learning from Failures: Charles W. Morris and the project to measure value
- Jeanette Melin — Rethinking Well-Being Measurement in Older Persons: A Reverse Construct Theory-Building Approach
- Amirreza Liaghat — Measurement of Aging
11:30–13:00 · Presidential Address (Auditorium)
Additional Information
The conference takes place within the University of Edinburgh Business School, located at 29 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh EH8 9JS.
The conference dinner (pre-registered only) will take place on Wednesday, 7:30pm, at Café Andaluz.
For all conference materials, including the book of abstracts, visit the conference materials folder.
For any questions, contact the organising team at measurement2026@gmail.com.
Registration Options
You can register here! [Registration is now closed]
There are four registration types available:
- Standard Full Programme – £155
- Student Full Programme – £130
- Standard Conference Only – £125
- Student Conference Only – £95
The Full Programme ticket includes the conference dinner.
The Conference Only ticket does not include the dinner.
We look forward to seeing you in Edinburgh in June 2026!
Important Dates
Submission portal opens: November 15, 2025Deadline for submission: January 15, 2026Notification of acceptance: March 15, 2026- Registration for the conference is now open!
Organiser and Host for the Conference: Jo Wolff (University of Edinburgh)
Queries: measurement2026@gmail.com
On behalf of the Council of the Society for the Study of Measurement: Luca Mari (President), Eran Tal (Secretary), and Council Members Leah McClimans, Nadine de Courtenay, Miguel Ohnesorge, David Torres Irribarra, and Mark Wilson.
Topics
Please see below for a non-exhaustive list of suggested topics; we particularly welcome contributions that make contact with this year’s conference theme: Ground Truth and Validity. While the notion of measurement validity is comparatively familiar, ground truth may need more of an introduction. The concept of ground truth has origins in remote sensing, where it is used to contrast the outcomes of a near or ground level measurement with outcomes of a remotely sensed measurement. From these origins, the concept has now moved to a wider use, particularly in machine learning contexts, where it denotes data assumed to be true, which can then be used to calibrate and validate machine learning data. The time seems ripe for a more careful investigation from a measurement perspective of the concept of ground truth—both in its original understanding and in its more metaphorical use.
Measurement and Simulation
- Connections between measuring and simulating
- Can simulation substitute for measurement?
Measurement and Data Science
- Measurement and data quality
- Measurement and data analysis
- Measurement and AI
Models in Measurement
- The role of models in measurement
- The role of models in justifying measurement results
- Models, intersubjectivity, objectivity, validation
Models of Measurement
- The general structure of the measurement process
- The structure of measurement in social and human sciences
- Transduction and calibration in measurement
- History of the conception of the structure of measurement
History, Philosophy and Sociology of Measurement
- Exploration across sciences with diverse philosophical perspectives
- New quantification and measurement approaches
- Epistemological and metaphysical approaches to measurement
Measurement Applications and their conceptual foundations in any area of science
- Life & Health Sciences
- Geosciences
- Social & Historical Sciences
- Physical Sciences
- Engineering & Computing
Call for Proposals (closed)
We invite proposals on any topics in the theory, history, philosophy, and application of measurement. We especially welcome proposals connected to this year’s theme Ground Truth and Validity. Proposals may take any of the following forms:
- Individual papers for a 20-minute presentation (+10 minutes Q&A)
- Symposium of 2-4 papers for a 90-minute session
- Posters
- Workshops for 2-4 hours on June 22nd
Please submit proposals for individual contributions (~500 words) or symposia/workshops (~1,200 words), specifying the chosen format (a)-(d), and following the instructions of the website. Additional information and the forms to submit your proposal can be found at the dedicated submission site.
Full submission link: https://app.oxfordabstracts.com/stages/80364/submitter (Now closed)