We are pleased to invite submissions for EMERGE 2026, an interdisciplinary conference dedicated to critical investigations of AI, digital infrastructures, and the socio‑technical futures now taking shape around the world. This year's theme, Contested Futures, calls for work that examines how emerging technologies are designed, governed, resisted, narrated, and transformed across media, communication, politics, culture, education, design, and everyday life.
AI systems increasingly organize economic power, political control, social life, and environmental extraction. EMERGE 2026 asks how these futures are being built, for whom, under what conditions, and with what alternatives already emerging across research, policy, activism, art, and practice.
We welcome submissions from communication and media researchers working on topics such as platforms, algorithmic governance, technological imaginaries, agency and resistance, critical and creative AI practices, digital democracy, synthetic research, and other perspectives that interrogate or reimagine technological futures. Contributions may be theoretical, empirical, methodological, case‑based, or practice‑driven.
Submission details:
– Abstracts (500–600 words) must be submitted through the online form.
– Deadline: 5 June 2026.
– No participation fee; participants cover travel and accommodation.
– Conference venue: Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, University of Belgrade.
– Keynotes: TBA.
Full call, guidelines, and submission form are available on the EMERGE website:
https://emerge.ifdt.bg.ac.rs/I warmly invite colleagues from across the ICA community to join us whether by presenting your work or by engaging in the conversations that define EMERGE. We look forward to your submissions and to the dialogues this year's conference will open.