CALL FOR PAPERS

Platform Bengali: Digital Humanities and Digital Culture in the Bangla-Speaking World
A One-Day Hybrid Academic Conference

Conference Date: 18 July 2026
Venue: Ramakrishna Mission Residential College, Narendrapur, Kolkata - 700103
Format: Hybrid (In-Person and Online)

Conference Convenor: Pranab K Mondal (Assistant Professor, RKMRC Narendrapur)
Volume Editors: Prithu Halder (Project Coordinator, Platform Bengali; IIT Tirupati), Debapriya Basu (Associate Professor, IIT Guwahati), Spandan Bhattacharya (Assistant Professor, BITS Pilani, Hyderabad)

ABOUT THE CONFERENCE

Platform Bengali: Digital Humanities and Digital Culture in the Bangla-Speaking World is a one-day hybrid academic conference that brings together scholars from literary and cultural studies, linguistics, media studies, and the Digital Humanities to examine how digital technologies are reshaping the Bengali language, its cultural production, and the institutions that sustain it.

Spoken by over 270 million people across national borders, diaspora networks, and digital platforms, Bengali is undergoing a transformation that is at once linguistic, aesthetic, and institutional. The rise of social media, streaming platforms, YouTube content creation, machine translation, and AI-driven language tools has generated new registers, audiences, and modes of cultural participation in the Bangla-speaking world that existing disciplinary frameworks struggle to account for. This conference intervenes at that gap and aims to initiate this discourse.

Situated at the intersection of Digital Humanities and Digital Culture studies, the conference argues that understanding Bengali's contemporary digital turn requires bringing computational approaches, platform studies, media ethnography, and literary-cultural analysis into sustained dialogue. It introduces conceptual vocabularies — including "platform vernaculars" and "vernacular remediation" (building on Bolter and Grusin, 1999; Burgess, 2006) — to make sense of rapidly evolving, multimodal, and often ephemeral digital objects in Bengali.

Select papers presented at the conference will be considered for publication in a peer-reviewed edited volume. Bloomsbury has expressed strong interest in publishing this volume.

THEMES AND TOPICS

The conference is organised under four thematic clusters. We invite contributions that engage with the following areas, though proposals on closely related topics are also welcome.

Part I: Language in Transition

This cluster examines how digital mediation is transforming Bengali at the level of syntax, spelling, neologism, and pedagogy. Topics include, but are not restricted to: emerging trends in Bengali digital syntax, orthography, and neologism formation; the impact of code-switching, transliteration, and Banglish on written Bengali in digital contexts; Bengali language pedagogy in the age of AI, machine translation, and digital learning tools; and computational and corpus-based approaches to studying contemporary Bengali language change.

Part II: Platform Vernaculars

This cluster investigates how specific digital platforms shape Bengali language use, cultural production, and audience formation. Topics include, but are not restricted to: the evolution of Bengali blogs, literary portals, and web magazines from the early internet to the present; language adaptation and register formation on social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, X/Twitter); Bengali memes as vernacular archives of humour, subversion, and remix culture; linguistic innovation and audience-building strategies among Bengali YouTube content creators; new visual and narrative regimes in Bengali OTT web series and streaming content; emergent digital formats including vertical films, micro dramas, and short-form narrative on mobile-first platforms; and the language of Bengali digital advertising.

Part III: Digital Textuality and Cultural Memory

This cluster explores the interface between literary culture, Digital Humanities projects, and new modes of audio-visual storytelling in Bengali. Topics include, but are not restricted to: audio storytelling in Bengali digital spaces including podcasts, YouTube audio dramas, and the afterlives of radio; literary culture in the digital age including book fairs, literary festivals, and the emergence of authors as internet microcelebrities; Digital Humanities tools, projects, and archives for the Bengali language (including projects such as Bichitra and Shabdakalpa); and informal digital archives, piracy networks, and volunteered labour in the preservation and circulation of Bengali cultural material.

Part IV: Circulation, Policy, and Futures

This cluster addresses the transnational reach of digital Bengali, the transformation of cultural industries, and the question of language policy. Topics include, but are not restricted to: transnational Bengali in the digital age including migration, diaspora, and language practices across borders; the transformation of cultural marketing in Bengali including film trailers, public relations, reviews, and promotional registers; language policy, standardisation, and the documentation of vernacular shifts in digital Bengali; and the politics of platform governance, algorithmic mediation, and their consequences for Bengali-language content.

WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR

We invite proposals for original, unpublished papers that engage with any of the themes listed above, or with closely related topics within the conference's four thematic clusters. We welcome contributions that: offer empirically grounded analyses of Bengali-language digital objects, platforms, or practices; bring Digital Humanities methods (computational text analysis, corpus linguistics, digital archiving, network analysis) into conversation with Bengali literary and cultural studies; engage critically with questions of platform governance, language policy, vernacular standardisation, or linguistic labour in Bengali digital spaces; examine the intersection of AI, machine translation, and Bengali-language pedagogy or cultural production; address transnational, diasporic, or cross-border dimensions of Bengali's digital life; and document or theorise digital archives, informal distribution networks, or new modes of cultural memory in Bengali.

We are especially interested in contributions that bridge disciplinary silos and that pair scholarly analysis with attention to practitioners, creators, and communities. Collaborative papers co-authored by academics, librarians, archivists, content creators, and industry practitioners are warmly encouraged.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Interested participants are invited to submit an abstract of 300–500 words, along with a tentative paper title and a brief author biography of 100–150 words per author, including institutional affiliation and research interests. Each proposal should indicate up to three thematic keywords drawn from the volume's four parts. Abstracts should be submitted in Word (.docx) format. Presentations at the conference will be 15 minutes in length, followed by 10 minutes of discussion.

To submit your participation in the conference, please complete this form and upload your abstract here. For any query, reach out to prithuhalder1997@gmail.com or bhashascope@gmail.com. Submitted abstracts will be reviewed by all three volume editors through a shared review process.

Thematic keywords: Each proposal should indicate up to three thematic keywords drawn from the volume's four parts, reflecting the primary areas the chapter engages with. These keywords will assist the editors in organising review panels and are not intended to limit the scope of the proposed chapter. Contributors whose work spans multiple themes are welcome to note this in their abstract.

PUBLICATION

Select papers from the conference will be invited for inclusion in a peer-reviewed edited volume, Digital Humanities and Digital Culture in the Bangla-Speaking World: Language, Technology, and Vernacular Creativity in the Twenty-First Century. Bloomsbury has expressed strong interest in publishing this volume. Contributors whose papers are selected will receive detailed style guidelines and word limits at that stage.

INDICATIVE TIMELINE

Abstract Submission Deadline: 20 May 2026
Notification of Acceptance: 5 June 2026
Full Paper Submission: 30 June 2026
Conference Date: 18 July 2026

This conference is organised by the Platform Bengali Project, an independent research initiative part-supported by BNP Paribas India and implemented by India Foundation for the Arts under its Arts Research Programme, and held in collaboration with Ramakrishna Mission Residential College, Narendrapur. For further updates, visit: https://bhashascope.in/events/conference.html