2026 Toronto Regional Conference

2026 Toronto Regional Conference – Call for Proposals Open Now

October 16, 2026
Westin Harbour Castle | Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Call for Proposals Open April 15 to May 15, 2026

The International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation is excited to share we are now accepting proposals for 90 Minute Workshops for the 2026 Toronto Regional Conference.

Join us in co-creating the 2026 Toronto Regional Conference! We invite creative, innovative, and exciting presentations that represent all aspects of understanding, researching, and treating complex trauma and dissociation. We encourage solid scientific and clinically grounded presentations.

Please note that there have been updates to the submission requirements, which are reflected in the Submission Guidelines below. The Call for Proposals will not be extended beyond May 15, 2026, so make sure to get your submissions in early!

Proposal decisions will be made by June 30, 2026 and all submitters will be notified by email once decisions are made.

Please consider submitting a presentation at the beginning/introductory or advanced level as we typically receive fewer submissions at these levels but they are highly requested by webinar attendees.

Please read the guidelines and policies below carefully before submitting your proposal as there are some guidelines that have changed in recent years to comply with updated CE guidelines. Failure to comply with guidelines could result in your presentation being declined.

To view examples of strong and weak abstracts, learning objectives and presenter bios, please refer to the 2025 Annual Conference Presenter Information.

All presenters must submit the following information through the required online form. Please note that the online form cannot be saved so you will need to compile this information in advance in a document to copy and paste in the form. If there are multiple presenters involved in the presentation, you should designate one person as the primary presenter and this person should be tasked with submitting the information for the group during the submission process and will be assigned additional tasks to complete if the presentation is accepted.

Presentation Title and Abstract

Presentation titles should clearly indicate what is being presented, and the abstract should concisely describe the clinical impact of the information being presented. Only provide titles and descriptions that can be supported by evidence. Including hyperbolic or exaggerated claims is NOT considered good practice. Titles should me no more than 20 words and/or 80 characters.

Abstracts are the primary information attendees use to determine which presentations they will attend. Abstracts should clearly convey the main information that will be presented. The abstract and learning objectives are the primary information used by proposal reviewers to determine whether to accept or reject the presentation.

Abstracts must be written in third person and should be no less than 300 and no more than 500 words.

Presenter Information

Presenter information for each presenter must be submitted via the online form. Since the form can only be completed by one person please collect the following information from all presenters before starting your submission.

Name as you would like it to appear in marketing materials
Details of highest degree (year of graduation, major, university, degree)
Designation (i.e. PhD, LCSW, MFT, etc.)
Email address & cell phone number (for staff contact only – internal)
200-300 word professional biography written in third person that includes the following required information:
- Highest degree including type of degree, major, university and graduation year
- Professional work history
- Summary of publications (if applicable)
- Summary of training completed
- Involvement in ISSTD and other associations
- Awards and designations (if applicable)
Most recent CV
Headshot (High Resolution, professional photo)

Learning Objectives

Submitters must submit five learning objectives that use acceptable verbs to complete the sentence, “Participants will be able to…”

You may only use verbs that are in the list of acceptable verbs in the Guideline for Writing Behavioral Learning Objectives.
Objectives must clearly state what participants will walk away being able to do/apply in their clinical practice or research.

Reference Citations

Five citations from peer-reviewed journals from January 2017 or later in American Psychological Association style. Half of all references must be from January 2022. Please pay close attention to this requirement, as this is the most frequent error received in submissions.

Books do not qualify as peer-reviewed sources and the citations cannot be authored by only the presenter.
Click here for guidelines on APA style.
Presenters may use additional citations in their final presentation that do not meet these requirements.
- These should be included in the presentation and referenced in a bibliography slide at the end of the presentation. You will also be asked to submit these as a seperate document during the final submission of materials.

Presentations must designate the knowledge/skill level required of the participant (i.e., Beginner/Introductory, Intermediate, or Advanced). Although these are only general guides, they are required in order to comply with continuing education regulations.

Beginning/Introductory: Suitable for all professional participants (including students). Introduces learners to a content area; includes information about a condition, treatment method, or issue; and involves learning and comprehending content.
Intermediate: Provides information that builds on knowledge practitioners with some experience already have. Focus on skill-building or adding knowledge, possibly following a brief overview of basic information, and involve using information in concrete situations and understanding the underlying structure of the material.
Advanced: Provides content for participants who have been working in the content area and have a clear understanding of the issues. These cover and address the complexities involved in the work and involve synthesizing material to create new patterns or structures or evaluating material for a specific purpose.

All submissions must declare whether the presentation has potential to cause audience distress. If you indicate that there is a potential to distress, you will be asked to provide additional detail on why the content may be distressing to participants.

Presentations must be designated as clinical, research, or a combination of clinical and research. Please select only one option as the review process for each type of presentation is different and the committee aims to have a mix of the two types of presentations.

ISSTD has updated the method for review and review questions. Each presentation will now be reviewed by at least one psychologist and one social worker to comply with continuing education requirements. Reviews will be blind (reviewers will not be able to see the names of the presenters) and different questions will be asked for clinical and scientific/research presentations. We will utilize specialty reviewers when necessary to ensure each submission is properly reviewed.

Reviewers will review the following information about each submission:

How well the presentation relates to the ISSTD Core Areas of Knowledge
Scientific relevance to the field of trauma and dissociation (Scientific/Research only)
Advancement of research in the field of trauma and dissociation (Scientific/Research only)
Clinical importance in the field of trauma and dissociation (Clinical only)
Originality and presentation of new/different perspectives
Inclusion of how sociocultural determinants are addressed
Connection of presentation to the conference theme
Reviewers will also review the presentation writing style and adherence to guidelines. Presentations may be accepted on the condition that changes be made to ensure the information is clear and in line with the guidelines.

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