IPPA — International Positive Psychology Association
10th World Congress on Positive Psychology Istanbul, Türkiye

Scientific Program

Message from Scientific Committee

Reimagining IPPA World Congress, Istanbul, Turkiye

Where Cultures Meet, Humanity Flourishes

The 10th IPPA World Congress on Positive Psychology arrives at a consequential moment. Rapid technological change, growing mental-health needs, social disconnection, geopolitical uncertainty, cultural transformation, and environmental pressures are reshaping how we live, learn, work, relate, heal, and pursue meaningful lives.

There could be no more fitting home for a congress on human flourishing than a city that has connected continents, cultures, and civilizations for centuries—a place where people, traditions, and ideas have long come together.

Inspired by this setting and guided by the Congress theme—“Where Cultures Meet, Humanity Flourishes”—the Scientific Committee has developed an open and forward-looking programme. Through ten interconnected scientific tracks and ten engaging programme formats, the Congress will bring diverse cultures, disciplines, methods, and forms of knowledge into conversation. Together, we will explore the questions and challenges shaping wellbeing today—and those that will continue to matter in the years ahead.

Our theme expresses both a conviction and an invitation. Flourishing is shaped by culture, community, history, place, and lived experience. When people with different perspectives meet in a spirit of curiosity and respect, they can deepen understanding, challenge assumptions, and inspire more humane and culturally responsive approaches to wellbeing.

The ten scientific tracks encompass culture, society, and the planet; artificial intelligence and digital technologies; close relationships and social connection; meaning, character, and spirituality; health, healing, and recovery; lifelong learning; the changing world of work; beauty, culture, and imagination; scientific rigour and responsibility; and emerging, cross-cultural, and underrepresented areas. Together, the tracks are designed to encourage connections across disciplines, cultures, methods, and forms of knowledge—and to create space for ideas that may not fit neatly within traditional boundaries.

Ten programme formats will offer an engaging, participatory, and action-oriented experience. Alongside traditional research presentations, the Congress will feature curated dialogues, critical reflection, practical demonstrations, and collaborative sessions bringing together researchers, practitioners, policymakers, community leaders, and people with lived experience.

We recognize that important work on these issues—and on wellbeing more broadly—is taking place across many disciplines and fields of practice. We invite contributions from within and beyond psychology and positive psychology, including from scholars, practitioners, and community partners whose work connects with the Congress themes.

We especially encourage students, early-career researchers, emerging practitioners, and contributors from underrepresented regions and communities to take part. Your perspectives, experiences, and ideas are essential to the conversation we hope to create.

With the generous support of our sponsors, Ibn Haldun University and Üsküdar University, we plan to offer at least 50 travel bursaries of up to US$1,000 each. These bursaries will support delegates from the Global South and students from any country whose submissions are selected for oral presentation through the blind review process. We hope this support will make it possible for a wider range of voices, experiences, and ideas to enrich the Congress.

We value rigorous research, innovative practice, critical perspectives, culturally grounded knowledge, and collaborative work that translates evidence into meaningful action. Whether your contribution strengthens established understanding, opens a new line of inquiry, connects insights across fields, or invites the field to think differently, it can help build a more open, connected, and responsible science of flourishing.

Join us to share what you know—and to question, listen, connect, and discover what becomes possible when cultures meet.

Scientific Committee

Jane Gillham - Scientific Committee Jane Gillham
Denise Quinlan - Scientific Committee Denise Quinlan
Matthew Iasiello - Scientific Committee Matthew Iasiello
Tayyab Rashid - Scientific Committee Tayyab Rashid

Scientific Tracks

Rather than organizing the program around traditional research and practice domains, the 2027 World Congress has adopted ten interconnected scientific tracks. These tracks reflect emerging priorities, diverse perspectives, and the complex challenges shaping the future of flourishing.

The proposed scientific tracks for the 10th IPPA World Congress on Positive Psychology were developed through a structured review of contemporary scholarship, emerging research priorities, and developments in practice and public policy. The aim was to represent positive psychology’s established foundations while opening the Congress to the questions shaping the future of human flourishing

The development process included:

  • Reviewing the American Psychological Association’s Monitor on Psychology reports on emerging trends for 2025 and 2026 (Straight, 2025 & 2026);
  • Examining highly cited, frequently downloaded, and influential recent articles in The Journal of Positive Psychology and the International Journal of Wellbeing;
  • Reviewing landmark and interdisciplinary research across positive psychology, health, education, organizations, technology, public policy, culture, religion, and the humanities to identify recurring themes and emerging priorities;
  • Organizing these themes into coherent tracks representing established scholarship, emerging priorities, and underrepresented perspectives.

The publications informing this process were neither definitive nor exhaustive. They helped identify influential ideas, significant findings, unresolved debates, methodological limitations, and areas requiring greater scientific and practical attention.

The ten tracks offer interconnected perspectives on flourishing across disciplines, cultures, populations, institutions, and global challenges.

Each track is grounded in evidence while encouraging critical examination of uncertainty. Artificial intelligence may expand access to health and education, yet human–AI teams do not consistently outperform the stronger human or AI working alone; outcomes depend on the task, relative capabilities, and interaction design (Vaccaro et al., 2024). Social connection is associated with mental and physical health and longevity, but important questions remain about cultural variation and how loneliness can be reduced at scale (Holt-Lunstad, 2024). Positive psychology interventions show small-to-medium average benefits across well-being, quality of life, depression, anxiety, and stress, but these effects should not be assumed to apply equally across populations, conditions, and settings (Carr et al., 2024)

The global burden of suffering makes this critical perspective essential. In 2023, approximately 1.17 billion people were living with mental disorders, accounting for 17.3% of global years lived with disability and representing the leading cause of disability worldwide (GBD 2023 Mental Disorder Collaborators, 2026). Flourishing science must therefore ask not only how people can enhance well-being, but how its theories, practices, and policies can serve those who are distressed, languishing, displaced, excluded, or unable to access quality care. It must address suffering and structural disadvantage rather than locating responsibility solely within individuals.

Cross-cultural and Indigenous perspectives are central to this agenda. Participatory research involving approximately 40,000 people across 50 countries found both shared and culturally distinctive understandings of well-being. Relationships and health were widely valued, while dignity, civic participation, economic security, autonomy, leisure, and cultural connection varied across contexts (Sollis et al., 2024). African positive psychology research has expanded but remains concentrated in relatively few countries, underscoring the need for wider representation, regional collaboration, culturally relevant measures, and greater attention to social, economic, relational, and ecological conditions (Wilson Fadiji et al., 2024).

The tracks consequently invite scholarship grounded in Indigenous, African, Asian, Islamic, Latin American, Middle Eastern, Pacific, diasporic, and other underrepresented knowledge traditions. These perspectives are not cultural additions to an otherwise universal Western framework. They can challenge fundamental assumptions about the self, relationships, suffering, morality, spirituality, health, community, land, and the good life—and help produce more valid theories, measures, practices, and policies.

The tracks also invite disciplines not traditionally placed at the centre of positive psychology. Medicine, neuroscience, sociology, anthropology, economics, philosophy, theology, public health, education, organizational science, law, political science, architecture, urban planning, technology, environmental studies, Indigenous studies, and the arts each illuminate different conditions of flourishing. Their integration can support more effective responses to complex challenges facing people and the planet.

Critical inquiry is therefore integral to all ten tracks. Congress participants are invited to examine strong findings alongside null results, failed replications, cultural limitations, unintended harms, and unanswered questions. Positive psychology’s movement toward more relational, cultural, systemic, spiritual, ecological, and justice-oriented perspectives demonstrates its capacity to evolve (Arslan, 2025). Philosophical critiques nevertheless ask whether this expansion has sufficiently transformed its underlying assumptions about happiness, freedom, and a universal good life (Eytan, 2025).

The ten tracks are therefore more than a structure for organizing presentations. They invite participants to share what we know, acknowledge what we do not know, question what has been taken for granted, and build a more rigorous, culturally responsive, effective, and applicable science of flourishing. By connecting scientific evidence with lived experience, Indigenous and community knowledge, multidisciplinary collaboration, and responsible innovation, the Congress seeks better solutions for individuals, relationships, communities, institutions, societies, future generations, and the planet.

References

  • Arslan, G. (2025). Beyond happiness: The three waves of positive psychology and the future of wellbeing. Journal of Happiness and Health, 5(2), 42–47. https://doi.org/10.47602/johah.v5i2.121
  • Carr, A., Finneran, L., Boyd, C., Shirey, C., Canning, C., Stafford, O., Lyons, J., Cullen, K., Prendergast, C., Corbett, C., Drumm, C., & Burke, T. (2024). The evidence-base for positive psychology interventions: A mega-analysis of meta-analyses. The Journal of Positive Psychology, 19(2), 191–205. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2023.2168564
  • Eytan, Y. (2025). A constructive critique of the dialectical aspect of positive psychology’s second wave. Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology, 45(4), 347–364. https://doi.org/10.1037/teo0000276
  • GBD 2023 Mental Disorder Collaborators. (2026). Updated trends in the global prevalence and burden of mental disorders, 1990–2023: A systematic analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2023. The Lancet, 407(10543), 2040–2064. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(26)00519-2
  • Holt-Lunstad, J. (2024). Social connection as a critical factor for mental and physical health: Evidence, trends, challenges, and future implications. World Psychiatry, 23(3), 312–332. https://doi.org/10.1002/wps.21224
  • Sollis, K., Biddle, N., Maulana, H., Yap, M., & Campbell, P. (2024). Measuring wellbeing across culture and context—Are we getting it right? Evaluating the variation in wellbeing conceptualisations throughout the world. Social Indicators Research, 174, 123–155. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-024-03382-z
  • Straight, S. (2025, January 1). Top 10 trends to watch in 2025. Monitor on Psychology, 56(1), 3. https://www.apa.org/monitor/2025/01/top-10-trends-to-watch
  • Straight, S. (2026, January 1). What’s ahead for psychology? 9 trends to watch in 2026. Monitor on Psychology, 57(1). https://www.apa.org/monitor/2026/01-02/nine-trends-to-watch
  • Vaccaro, M., Almaatouq, A., & Malone, T. W. (2024). When combinations of humans and AI are useful: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Nature Human Behaviour, 8, 2293–2303. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-024-02024-1
  • Wilson Fadiji, A., Khumalo, I. P., Wissing, M. P., & Appiah, R. (2024). A bibliometric review of positive psychology and well-being research in Africa. Frontiers in Psychology, 15, Article 1384362. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1384362

Programming Options

Ten Signature Programs are available for submission within any of the ten scientific tracks.

Signature Programs: Summary and Format Options

Program Primary Purpose Format
1. Innovative Practice Workshops and Demonstrations Provide practical experience with evidence-informed approaches that participants can examine and adapt. 60-minute interactive workshop or live demonstration.
2. Wellbeing Intervention Showcase Demonstrate a focused intervention addressing a clearly defined everyday wellbeing problem. 10-minute presentation or practical demonstration, with an optional audience-rated competition.
3. Science Meets Practice Panels Connect flourishing research with practice, policy, organizations, education, communities, and lived experience. 60-minute moderated panel with facilitated discussion and audience participation.
4. Focused Flourishing Symposium Integrate complementary research, practice, cultural knowledge, or emerging perspectives around one focused topic. 60-minute symposium with three or four presentations, moderated discussion, and audience questions.
5. Stories and Case Studies Worth Sharing Share ethically presented lived experiences and cases that generate meaningful insights about flourishing. Curated live or prerecorded presentations of approximately 8–10 minutes.
6. Flourishing on Film Communicate research, practice, culture, community knowledge, and lived experience through visual storytelling. Prerecorded visual or documentary presentation of 8–10 minutes; exceptional works may extend to 15 minutes.
7. Early Career Investigator Competition Recognize original flourishing research led by investigators within seven years of completing their doctorate. Preliminary scientific review followed by 15-minute live finalist presentations and questions.
8. Student Research Competition Support undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral researchers presenting original flourishing research. Abstract review followed by 15-minute live finalist presentations and questions.
9. Poster Presentations Share research, practice, interventions, conceptual work, and emerging findings through accessible visual presentation. Printed poster, brief two- to three-minute overview, and discussion during a facilitated session.
10. Global Challenges and Multidisciplinary Solutions Develop actionable, culturally responsive responses to major challenges affecting human and planetary flourishing. Multidisciplinary team proposal followed by a 40–50-minute Congress session and Global Solutions Action Brief.
Our Sponsors
İbn Haldun Üniversitesi Presenting Sponsor
Üsküdar Üniversitesi Premier Sponsor
Burkon Turizm
Congress logistics managed in partnership with Burkon.