[Commlist] IAMCR Pre-Conference on Reimagining Climate Media Research: Current Challenges and Future Directions

Call for Abstracts
*
*
*IAMCR Pre-Conference on Reimagining Climate Media Research: Current 
Challenges and Future Directions.*

The event details and instructions for abstract submissions are below:
**
Date of pre-conference: Saturday, 27 June 2026, 9:00am - 4:00pm
Location: Dublin City University, Dublin, Ireland
In collaboration with: Climate Social Science Network’s Working Group on 
Critical Studies of Climate Media, Discourse, and Power and IAMCR’s 
Environment, Science, and Risk Communication Section
Co-organizers: Hanna E. Morris, Emily Diamond, James Painter, Brenda 
McNally, Lluis de Nadal, Sylvia Hayes, Allen Munoriyarwa, Marc Esteve 
del Valle, Kelly E. Perry, Loredana Loy, Zeina Seaifan, Claire Konkes, 
Miki Kawabata, Sibo Chen
Contact: (hanna.morris /at/ utoronto.ca) <mailto:(hanna.morris /at/ utoronto.ca)>
We invite abstract submissions that reflect on the past, current, and 
future trajectories of the field of climate change communication. In 
line with IAMCR’s main conference <https://iamcr.org/galway2026> theme 
of /Peripheries and Connections: Media, Communication, and 
Transformation, /this event will bring together scholars from a range of 
career levels and geographical locations to take stock of research on 
climate media. In this pre-conference, we will collaboratively 
co-imagine possible new directions for climate media research that are 
transformative and have impact within, across, and beyond the 
university. To this end, we encourage practice-based abstracts from 
climate media-makers, NGOs, activists, and community organizers in 
addition to traditional scholarly papers. In stride with the recent 
essay titled /Climate media amidst technopolitical change: challenges, 
transformations, and new directions for research 
<https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-025-03936-1>///(Wetts, 
Morris, Boykoff, et al., 2025), we also welcome scholars to reflect on 
what more impactful partnerships outside of the academy /could /look 
like and how to build and support these collaborative spaces. We also 
seek papers that explore peripheralised voices in climate media, the 
consequences of such peripheralisation, and how they can be brought into 
the centre of climate research. Practitioners and scholarship from 
less-researched geographical contexts are encouraged.
Possible paper topics include but are not limited to:

  *
    Transdisciplinary scholarship on climate change communication and
    how to build long-lasting, meaningful, and impactful partnerships
    with communities outside of the university
  *
    Methodological or practical challenges in working in the
    inter/trans-disciplinary field of climate communication, especially
    amid authoritarian threats to researchers and media practitioners
  *
    Climate communication as intervention – evaluating what “impact”
    means across academic, policy, community, and activist contexts
  *
    Reflections on teaching and mentoring in climate communication,
    particularly in politically fraught and/or financially constrained
    institutional environments
  *
    How recent developments in AI technologies are shaping what we know
    about climate change communication and how we do our research,
    teaching, and/or practitioner-work
  *
    The enduring legacy of the deficit model of science communication
    and what it misses about how people engage with climate change
    communication
  *
    The intersection of mental health, media, and climate-related
    issues, including possible oversights in how the field has
    conceptualized eco-anxiety, particularly among young people
  *
    Exploring climate media from the peripheries – how climate change is
    communicated, contested, or silenced in the Global South, small
    island states, rural areas, and historically marginalised communities
  *
    Community-led and Indigenous climate storytelling, including
    questions of epistemic justice, sovereignty, and co-production of
    knowledge
  *
    Decolonial, feminist, and critical political economy approaches to
    climate media and communication
  *
    Visual, artistic and alternative forms of climate communication
    research and/or practice

Abstracts should be no more than 500 words, including the author’s name 
(and co-authors’ names, if applicable), contact details, and 
affiliation(s). Please email all abstract submissions to 
(hanna.morris /at/ utoronto.ca) <mailto:(hanna.morris /at/ utoronto.ca)>with the 
subject line of “Climate Media Pre-Conference Submission” by March 24, 
2026. We will send out notices of acceptances and instructions on how to 
register for the pre-conference by April 3, 2026. Participation must be 
in-person with no virtual or hybrid options.

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