[Commlist] CfP Digital Intimacies, young people, and everyday life

Call for papers | International conference
*Digital intimacies, young people and everyday life
*25-26 September 2025 - University of Padova, Italy

*Keynote speakers*: Prof. Jessica Ringrose (UCL) and Dr. Paul Byron 
(University of Technology Sydney).

View the full call here: https://digitalintimacies.eu/conference/ 
<https://digitalintimacies.eu/conference/>

Submission deadline:* 27 April 2025*

The digital space is gradually contributing to shaping the concept of 
intimacy, transforming what was once considered the exclusive domain of 
the private sphere into a continuous flow of data, desires, and 
connections. From social media to dating apps, from digital tools for 
self-expression to algorithmic imaginaries, intimate relationships are 
constantly redefined in the digital environment in increasingly complex 
and multifaceted ways. For young people, digital media has become an 
essential part of their everyday lives, as they are the fastest group in 
taking up, transforming and abandoning new technologies. In their daily 
media practices, young people establish, maintain, and perform 
relationships while negotiating the need for privacy with the desire for 
visibility. Digital platforms act as affective architectures, creating 
new marketplaces where emotions, identities, and relationships are 
continuously profiled and monetized.

As Laurent Berlant (1998) noted, these “contradictory desires” are 
intrinsic to the intimacy of daily life. By welcoming the ambiguities 
and paradoxes of intimacy, connection and identity, the field of digital 
intimacies contends with the constant interplay between public and 
private in everyday life. How is intimacy experienced in a context where 
everything seems mediated through algorithms and regimes of visibility? 
What new forms of affection, sexuality, and bonds emerge in the digital 
daily lives of young people, and what risks do these transformations 
entail? How do young people draw on, negotiate and transform 
representations and models of intimate relationships?

This conference invites researchers to investigate the multiple ways in 
which young people interact with, negotiate, and reinvent intimacy in a 
progressively digitalized world. Intimacy is not limited to romantic or 
sexual relationships, but includes a broader spectrum of dimensions, 
such as friendships, family bonds, personal identity, and emotional 
well-being. We welcome approaches that move beyond and challenge 
heteronormative, Western-centric notions of intimacy, inviting broader 
and more inclusive conceptualizations.

The goal of the conference is to create a critical discussion space to 
reflect on the opportunities, challenges, and contradictions inherent in 
digital intimacies, exploring its intersections with the social, 
cultural, and technological dimensions of daily life. While the digital 
offers new possibilities for connections, self-expression, and identity 
construction, it simultaneously raises questions about privacy, 
surveillance, commodification, and inequalities.

While the main focus of the conference lies within media, cultural, and 
gender studies—particularly concerning young people, digital intimacies, 
and everyday life—interdisciplinary perspectives are welcome.

We invite presentations on the following topics, but not limited to:

  * Dating, relationships, and intimate connections
  * Sexual expressions and practices, including sexting and pornography
  * Gender identities, performances and representations
  * LGBTQIA+ activism and communities
  * Intersectional perspectives on digital intimacies
  * Friendship and networks of care
  * Constant connection and digital disconnection in interpersonal
    communication
  * Bodies, health, and sex education
  * Online and offline abuse in intimate relationships
  * Datification and commodification of intimacy
  * Platforms, algorithms, and digital monitoring, including intimate
    partner surveillance and location tracking
  * Intimate citizenship and rights
  * Methodological and ethical challenges in doing research with young
    people and digital intimacies

*Abstract Submission
*Please submit your 350-400 words abstract in English, including contact 
details before *27 April 2025*. Abstracts will be reviewed via a blind 
peer review process.

Please submit your abstract via Google Forms: 
https://forms.gle/cmmfHvcbfh5ZzjYo6 <https://forms.gle/cmmfHvcbfh5ZzjYo6>

Find the full call for papers and submission guidelines here: 
http://www.digitalintimacies.eu/conference 
<http://www.digitalintimacies.eu/conference>


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