Call for Papers
We invite you to join us for the Twenty-fourth International Conference on Technology, Knowledge, and Society, the annual meeting of the Technology, Knowledge, and Society Research Network, hosted by Auckland University of Technology, taking place in Auckland, New Zealand and online, 6–7 April 2028. The conference is part of an annual paired gathering with the International Conference on e-Learning & Innovative Pedagogies, bringing together overlapping communities of inquiry around technology, learning, knowledge systems, and social change.
The Technology, Knowledge, and Society Research Network is a leading international meeting place for researchers, technologists, educators, policymakers, designers, social scientists, community leaders, and practitioners working at the intersection of technological change and social life. The conference welcomes proposals that address technology not only as a set of tools or systems, but as a force that shapes knowledge, institutions, culture, environment, labor, governance, and everyday experience.
Special Focus
The 2028 special focus, Walking Backwards Into the Future: Technologies for a Fragile Earth, invites participants to examine how technological futures might be shaped by memory, responsibility, place, ecology, and social purpose.
This special focus is inspired by the languages and cultures of the Pacific, in which humans face the past, which we can see and from which we can learn, while walking backwards into the future, which is unknown and hidden from our view. These themes invite exploration of how digital technologies can enhance Indigenous, ecological, and democratic possibilities through innovative approaches in education.
For the Technology, Knowledge, and Society Research Network, this framing challenges dominant narratives of technological progress that imagine the future as something to be accelerated toward, optimized, or controlled. Instead, it asks how societies might move into technological futures with humility, caution, creativity, and care.
Technologies today are not only devices, platforms, or infrastructures. They are also social arrangements, knowledge systems, environmental actors, political instruments, and cultural forms. They shape how people learn, work, govern, communicate, belong, remember, and imagine the future. In a fragile world, the question is not simply what technologies can do, but what they make possible, what they put at risk, and whose knowledge, values, and futures they serve.
This special focus invites critical and practical conversations about the relationship between technology and society in a time of ecological and institutional uncertainty. How can ancestral wisdom inform technological futures? How can digital systems remain accountable to place, community, and environment? How can technologies support ecological care, democratic participation, and social justice? How should societies respond to artificial intelligence, automation, data extraction, and platform power? What kinds of knowledge are needed to guide technology toward more livable futures?
We welcome proposals that address technology as a social practice, a knowledge practice, a design challenge, and a field of responsibility in a fragile Earth.
Themes
- Theme 1: Ancestral Wisdom in the Age of AI: exploring how inherited knowledge, Indigenous epistemologies, cultural memory, and community traditions can inform technological futures. It invites work on AI ethics, Indigenous data sovereignty, technological governance, digital sovereignty, intergenerational knowledge, cultural continuity, responsible innovation, and the relationship between advanced technologies and older ways of knowing.
- Theme 2: Place-based Knowledge and Digital Technologies: exploring how digital technologies are shaped by, and should remain accountable to, place, land, community, and local experience. It invites work on digital infrastructures, smart cities, community technology, local knowledge systems, mapping, environmental monitoring, platform governance, regional innovation, and the tension between global technological systems and situated social life.
- Theme 3: Innovative Approaches to Technology, Ecology, and Environmental Responsibility: exploring how technologies respond to ecological fragility, climate change, and environmental responsibility. It invites work on climate technology, sustainability transitions, green computing, circular systems, energy infrastructures, environmental data, ecological design, digital tools for environmental governance, and the social and environmental costs of technological development.
- Theme 4: Technologies, Participation, and Possibilities: exploring how technologies shape participation, democracy, access, and future possibilities. It invites work on digital citizenship, platform publics, technology policy, civic technologies, accessibility, digital inclusion, labor and automation, surveillance, public trust, open knowledge, and the design of technological systems that support more equitable and democratic futures.
We also welcome proposals addressing the core themes of the Technology, Knowledge, and Society Research Network, including technologies and human usability, technologies in knowledge sharing, ubiquitous learning, and technologies in society.
Knowledge Experience and Format
The conference is organized as a hybrid knowledge experience, integrating in-person and online participation within a unified scholarly environment.
For in-person delegates in Auckland, the conference is designed as a human-scale gathering shaped by conversation, shared inquiry, and place-based exchange. Sessions, talking circles, breaks, and informal encounters create opportunities to connect technology research with social analysis, policy, design, institutional practice, community knowledge, and the real-world systems that shape technological change.
For online delegates, the conference is more than a remote viewing option. Accepted proposals become Presentation Pages where presenters share abstracts, media, and supporting materials. Delegates participate through live online sessions, asynchronous engagement, and discussion spaces that remain available before, during, and after the event.
Across both formats, the emphasis is on reciprocal exchange rather than one-way presentation. Whether joining in Auckland or online, participants are part of a shared knowledge environment where ideas can be presented, discussed, revisited, and developed into future collaborations, publications, policy conversations, technology initiatives, and community projects.
Publication Pathways
All accepted proposals are included in the conference proceedings, providing a formal record of the conference program and presentation abstracts. Proceedings offer a way for presenters to make their work discoverable as part of the annual knowledge record of the Research Network.
Presenters are invited to further develop their conference work for possible publication in The International Journal of Technology, Knowledge, and Society, the peer-reviewed journal of the Technology, Knowledge, and Society Research Network.
Participants may also propose longer-form projects for the Technology, Knowledge, and Society Book Imprint, which publishes monographs and edited collections focused on technology, knowledge systems, digital culture, social change, innovation, governance, sustainability, and the future of technological society.
A Member-Based Research Community
Membership in the Technology, Knowledge, and Society Research Network provides year-round access to the community, publications, and programs that support the conference. Members receive benefits including a conference registration discount, access to digital media archives from past conferences, publishing pathway benefits, online programming, Network updates, and opportunities to grow their professional network in person and online. Membership also includes personal electronic access to journal and book content published by the Research Network.
Membership in the Technology, Knowledge, and Society Research Network is included in all conference Presenter Passes.
Join Us
We warmly invite you to submit a proposal and join us, either in Auckland or online, for the Twenty-fourth International Conference on Technology, Knowledge, and Society.
Together, we will examine how societies can walk backwards into the future — learning from the past, questioning technological promises, and shaping more responsible, ecological, and democratic futures for a fragile Earth.
Sincerely,
Dr. Georgina Tuari Stewart, Local Conference Committee, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand
Dr. Fiona Westbrook, Local Conference Committee, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand
Dr. Lincoln Dam, Local Conference Committee, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand
Dr. Selena Meiklejohn Whiu, Local Conference Committee, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand
Dr. Karen Finn, Local Conference Committee, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand
Dr. Marcus Breen, Research Network Chair, Boston College, United States of America
Dr. Phillip Kalantzis-Cope, Chief Social Scientist, Common Ground Research Networks, United States of America