Technological futures are not given. They are made, and they can be made differently. EMERGE 2026: Contested Futures takes place at a moment when AI systems have become central to the organization of economic power, political control, and social sorting, while democratic institutions struggle to keep pace and ecological costs mount. Rather than treating technological change as inevitable or neutral, the conference invites critical reflection on how emerging technologies are developed, governed, narrated, and contested.

As AI and digital infrastructures become increasingly embedded in everyday life, they reshape democratic processes, social relations, environmental conditions, education, design, media, and cultural production. These futures are shaped not only by technical innovation, but also by struggles over labor, resources, values, knowledge, and social organization. EMERGE 2026 therefore asks what is at stake, but also what is already being done, by whom, under which conditions, and what alternatives are being built, demanded, and practiced.

At the core of this year’s conference are several guiding questions. How are AI and emerging technologies reshaping power, governance, and public life? What forms of inequality, exclusion, and extraction do they reproduce, intensify, or obscure? How are technological futures narrated, legitimized, and contested across media, culture, platforms, and everyday life?

These questions extend to emerging methods, practices, and alternatives. How is synthetic research, understood as the use of AI-generated data, personas, and simulations to model human behavior, being used across disciplines, and what risks arise when its findings inform decision-making processes? What kinds of critical, speculative, and practice-based approaches might help us reimagine and enact more just, democratic, and sustainable alternatives? What alternatives are already being imagined, built, practiced, and defended, and whose work makes them possible?

EMERGE 2026 welcomes interdisciplinary contributions that critically examine dominant technological paradigms and engage with resistant, alternative, and transformative approaches. Submissions may come from philosophy, sociology, political theory, media and communication studies, cultural studies, art theory, education, design, computer science, and related disciplines, exploring how digital futures are shaped, contested, and reimagined. Contributions grounded in case studies, action research, policy analysis, and practice-based inquiry are especially welcome alongside theoretical and empirical work.

Topics include, but are not limited to:

• Digital democracy, governance, and technological power
• AI ethics, justice, and social inequality
• Environment, extraction, sustainability, and digital degrowth
• Art, culture, and critical AI practices
• Agency, resistance, and subjectivity in the age of AI
• Education, AI-assisted learning, and digital literacy
• Media and communication: platforms, algorithms, and technological imaginaries
• Synthetic research: methods, risks, and epistemic challenges
• Human-machine communication: power, design, and human-AI relations
• Speculative and alternative technological futures

Submission Guidelines

All abstracts must be submitted exclusively through the abstract submission form available here. The submission deadline is 20 June 2026.

Each submission should include:

• Title 
• Abstract (500–600 words) 
• 3–5 keywords 
• Name, current position, affiliation, email address, and a short biography (no more than 200 words) of all authors 

Authors are required to use the provided abstract template. For any inquiries regarding the submission process, please contact: emerge@ifdt.bg.ac.rs

The Scientific Committee of the Conference will select presenters based on the relevance of submitted abstracts for selected themes. Please specify the subtopic you are submitting to. All abstracts will be published in a book of abstracts, and selected submissions will be considered for publication as full papers in an edited volume.  

Important Dates: 

• Submission Deadline: 20 June 2026  

• Notification of Acceptance: 5 July 2026 

• Conference Dates: 5-6 November 2026