[Commlist] CFP CSAA 2026: What the * is going on? Rethinking cultural studies in times of crisis

Conference Call for Papers: WHAT THE * IS GOING ON? RETHINKING CULTURAL 
STUDIES IN TIMES OF CRISIS

Conference for the Cultural Studies Association of Australasia 2026
December 7, Prefix Postgrad Day | December 8-10, Full Conference Program
University of Technology Sydney, Ultimo, New South Wales

We find ourselves in a historical moment marked by entangled crises. 
From Russia's invasion of Ukraine to the genocide in Gaza perpetrated 
by Israel, from an accelerating climate emergency to deepening anxieties 
about the integrity and sustainability of universities, world-historical 
events appear poised at the precipice of radically diverging possible 
futures. Geopolitical conflicts now also converge with a profound 
reorganisation of cultural production under platform capitalism: 
artificial intelligence has become an infrastructural force transforming 
how culture is created, circulated, and valued, while subscription-based 
streaming services have redefined the ways that cultural objects are 
owned, accessed, and discarded. Correspondingly, new forms of digital 
cultural life are proliferating at speed, from rapid fire vertical 
mini-dramas to cross-border livestream e-commerce to the arrival of the 
virtual boyfriend. These developments unfold alongside ongoing political 
transformations across the Asia-Pacific region, including the rise of 
feminist activisms across East Asia, mass progressive industrial action 
in Aotearoa, and the intensification of police powers, surveillance, and 
settler colonial violence in Australia after The Voice.

What the * is going on? What kinds of theoretical, methodological, and 
political interventions can Cultural Studies offer to understand such 
crises? What ways of knowing, communicating, and living might allow us 
to respond to these conditions collectively? What forms of power - 
algorithmic, racialised, colonial, ableist, and gendered – can become 
visible and legible through a Cultural Studies lens, and how might this 
shift, in turn, Cultural Studies’ relationships to other disciplinary 
formations? Further, how are Indigenous thinkers and communities 
changing the ways that culture, identity, place, and power are being 
understood during such periods of global upheaval?

CSAA 2026 invites you to join us in rethinking as an urgent intellectual 
and political task. It opens space for diverse contributions while 
foregrounding a reflexive inquiry into what cultural studies is, what it 
does, and what it might become under conditions of structural 
transformation and technological upheaval. Building on CSAA 2025’s focus 
on the “heat” of intensifying relations across cultures, media, 
environments, and governance, CSAA 2026 faces up to this moment in which 
such intensities have escalated, becoming entangled, uneven, and 
increasingly difficult to navigate.


  To help spark some ideas, submissions for panels or presentations 
could include topics such as:

  - First Nations futures: imagining and building Indigenous-led futures.
  - Entangled crises: exploring how geopolitical conflict, climate 
breakdown, economic instability, and academic precarity intersect to 
form a condition of overlapping and continuous crisis.
  - Cultural studies in crisis: interrogating the role, relevance, and 
future of cultural studies amid institutional restructuring, 
disciplinary shifts, and pressures on knowledge production. As part of 
this sub-theme, a panel will be dedicated to the legacy of Graeme 
Turner, a founding figure of Australian cultural studies and author of 
key works including What’s Become of Cultural Studies (2011) and Broken: 
Universities, Politics and the Public Good (2025).
  - Platformed cultural production: examining how platforms, 
algorithms, and data infrastructures are reshaping how culture is 
created, circulated, and valued.
  - Media, conflict, and information disorder: exploring how war, 
propaganda, disinformation, and outrage circulate through media systems 
and shape public culture.
  - AI and machinic culture: data justice, analysing generative AI, 
automation, and human–machine relations in relation to authorship, 
creativity, and control.
  - Cultural studies and creative practice: exploring how artistic and 
creative practices – screen, music, performance, literary and poetry, 
and visual arts (among others) - engage with, respond to, and reimagine 
conditions of crisis and trans formation.
  - Intimacy and affective life: investigating transformations in 
relationships, gender politics, and emotional economies under 
platformisation and digital mediation.
  - Labour, mobility, and survival: addressing precarious work, 
migration, and the reorganisation of labour under platform capitalism 
and global inequalities.
  - Climate, infrastructure, and more-than-human worlds: considering 
climate crisis as a cultural and infrastructural condition involving 
human and non-human actors.
  - Power and inequality: foregrounding racialised, gendered, ableist, 
colonial, and algorithmic power relations embedded in cultural and 
technological systems.
  - Methods and interventions: rethinking methodologies, collaborative 
practices, and forms of knowledge production in response to rapidly 
changing conditions.
  - Imagining otherwise: exploring speculative, creative, and 
collective approaches to living, thinking, and making culture beyond crisis.

These are just some provocations to ignite your own ideas with this 
year’s theme. As always, the CSAA annual conference is open to any hot 
topics in cultural studies. We’re looking forward to hearing your 
versions of what the * is going on!

Submission options:

Panel submission (min 3, max 4 presenters): CSAA 2026 (Panel Submission)
https://forms.cloud.microsoft/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=JhyR6J_PnEqHjlJ4B76HkfCoR8V3iP1BvQmfAYjmPRVUNUNFSVlIQlpGMkRPVEdBUEpGM1kzSDUxRS4u 
<https://forms.cloud.microsoft/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=JhyR6J_PnEqHjlJ4B76HkfCoR8V3iP1BvQmfAYjmPRVUNUNFSVlIQlpGMkRPVEdBUEpGM1kzSDUxRS4u>

Individual submission: CSAA 2026 (individual submission)
https://forms.cloud.microsoft/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=JhyR6J_PnEqHjlJ4B76HkfCoR8V3iP1BvQmfAYjmPRVUM1VFOUIxNDMwNVQyMExYTU9MT05KNUZGMC4u 
<https://forms.cloud.microsoft/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=JhyR6J_PnEqHjlJ4B76HkfCoR8V3iP1BvQmfAYjmPRVUM1VFOUIxNDMwNVQyMExYTU9MT05KNUZGMC4u>

Keynotes to be announced soon.

The CSAA conference will be held in dialogue with Digital Intimacies 12, 
taking place at the University of Sydney on 3–4 December. All CSAA 
participants are warmly invited to attend its sessions, with no 
registration fee required for Digital Intimacies. CSAA 2026 will also 
host a plenary session led by the Media Futures Hub at the University of 
New South Wales. Finally, the conference will give rise to a Special 
Issue of Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies and a Special 
Issue of Somatechnics: Journal of Bodies - Technologies - Power.

Organising Committee: Dennis Bruining, Jessica Kean, Timothy Laurie, 
Tingting Liu, and Anna Cristina Pertierra.

For any questions, please contact: (csaauts2026 /at/ gmail.com)

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