[Commlist] CFP: Media Theory Conference: Naples 2027

Call for Papers: Media Theory at “L’Orientale”
Media Theory Conference: Naples 2027
June 23-25, 2027
Università Degli Studi di Napoli “L’Orientale”, Naples, Italy

Organised by: Simon Dawes & Tiziana Terranova
Organising Committee: Gennaro Ascione, Edoardo Biscossi, Simon Dawes, 
Immacolata Egizio, M. Beatrice Fazi, Tiziana Terranova, Gioacchino 
Orsenigo, Stamatia Portanova, Luca Recano, Antonio Ricciardi.

Keynote Speakers Media Theory: M. Beatrice Fazi, Yuk Hui, Luciana Parisi 
and Tiziana Terranova
Keynote Speakers ‘Mediterranean Technocultures’: Iain Chambers, 
Donatella della Ratta (plus more to be confirmed)

ABOUT THE CONFERENCE

Following on from the first Media Theory Conference in Toronto in 2025, 
our second instalment will take place in Naples in 2027. Held at the 
Università Degli Studi di Napoli “L’Orientale”, the 2-day Media Theory 
conference (23-24 June) is being organised to coincide with a 1-day 
event on Mediterranean Technocultures (25 June).

At a time where all that we have understood as media is undergoing 
profound change – “in terms of scale, integration with everyday life, 
transformation of the archive, and the growing convergence of media 
platforms with other domains such as transport, logistics, finance, 
health, and e-commerce” (McQuire, 2017) – new terms and concepts, and 
radical rethinking of assumptions, are required. Emphasising the 
importance of abstraction, conceptualisation and problematisation (Fazi, 
2017) and recognising the need to self-critically geopoliticise 
knowledge production (Shome, 2017), contributions to the Media Theory 
Conference are particularly encouraged that focus on problematising the 
concepts of ‘media’, ‘theory’ and ‘media theory’, deprovincialising 
(e.g. media theory from the global south; queering media theory), or 
radicalising open access publishing (remixing; rethinking peer-review; 
theorising ‘openness’ and ‘access’), or that seek to bring into dialogue 
diverse theoretical and methodological approaches, so as to develop a 
transnational and transdisciplinary forum in which to collectively 
enable media theory and generate debate on academic publishing (Dawes, 
2017).

We therefore invite proposals for papers for the conference on any 
aspect of media theory, including the following:

- Rethinking definitions of ‘media([tiza]tion)’, and ‘communication/s’;
- Rethinking distinctions between ‘theory/ies’ and ‘philosophy/ies’;
- Transcending disciplinary boundaries and deprovincializing theoretical 
debate;
- Readdressing neglected theorists and proposing alternative histories 
of media theory;
- Critiquing blindspots in dominant approaches and critically engaging 
with alternative or marginalised perspectives;
- Debating openness, independence, open access, peer-review and the role 
of an academic journal;
-  As well as critical perspectives and alternative visions of 
Mediterranean technocultures.

Proposals of up to 500 words, accompanied by an indicative bibliography 
and a short biographical note, for 15-minute papers should be sent to 
the organisers of the conference, Simon Dawes (UVSQ-Paris Saclay, 
France) and Tiziana Terranova (Università Degli Studi di Napoli 
"L'Orientale", Italy), at (editors /at/ mediatheoryjournal.org) 
<mailto:(editors /at/ mediatheoryjournal.org)> by Friday 30 October 2026. 
Emails should be sent with the subject line “Naples Conference: 
Abstract”. Decisions will be confirmed by Friday 27 November 2026. 
Registration fees and other details will follow closer to the time of 
the conference, and registration will be for both Media Theory and 
‘Mediterranean Technocultures’ events. Participants will also be 
encouraged to submit full article-length versions of their conference 
papers to the journal by December 1st 2027. Following the usual 
peer-review process, accepted articles will be published in a special 
section of Media Theory in 2028.


ABOUT THE KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

M. Beatrice Fazi is a philosopher working on the philosophies of 
computation, technology and media. Her research focuses on the 
ontologies and epistemologies produced by contemporary technoscience. 
She has published extensively on the limits and potentialities of the 
computational method, on digital aesthetics and on the automation of 
thought. She is Associate Professor at the University of Sussex (United 
Kingdom), the author of Contingent Computation: Abstraction, Experience, 
and Indeterminacy in Computational Aesthetics (2018), and co-author of 
Digital Theory (2025).

Yuk Hui is Full Professor of Philosophy at Erasmus University Rotterdam, 
where he holds the Chair of Human Conditions and serves as the director 
of the Erasmus Institute for Philosophy and Technology. He is author of 
several monographs including On the Existence of Digital Objects 
(prefaced by Bernard Stiegler, University of Minnesota Press, 2016), The 
Question Concerning Technology in China-An Essay in Cosmotechnics 
(Urbanomic, 2016), Recursivity and Contingency (R&LI, 2019), Art and 
Cosmotechnics (University of Minnesota Press, 2021), Post-Europe 
(Sequence/Urbanomic, 2024), Machine and Sovereignty (University of 
Minnesota Press, 2024) and Kant Machine (Bloomsbury, 2026). He is also 
the founding editor of Technophany- A Journal for Philosophy and 
Technology (Radboud University Press).

Luciana Parisi is Professor at Program in Literature and core faculty 
for the Graduate Program in Computational Media Art and Culture at Duke 
University.  She was a member of the CCRU (Cybernetic Culture Research 
Unit) and currently a co-founding member of CCB (Critical Computation 
Bureau). Her research is a philosophical investigation of technology in 
culture, aesthetics and politics. She is the author of Abstract Sex: 
Philosophy, Biotechnology and the Mutations of Desire (2004, Continuum 
Press) and Contagious Architecture. Computation, Aesthetics and Space 
(2013, MIT Press). She is completing a monograph on Automation and 
Philosophy (MIT, forthcoming) and co-editor of the edited collection 
Colonial Fractals: The Racial Politics of Planetary Computation (Duke 
University Press, forthcoming).

Tiziana Terranova is Full Professor of Sociology of Culture and 
Communication at the University of Naples "L'Orientale" and a Research 
Affiliate at Columbia University, Teachers College. Her research 
explores the intersections of digital media, technology, culture, and 
politics from the perspectives of critical theory and cultural studies. 
She is the author of Network Culture: Politics for the Information Age 
(Pluto Press, 2004) and After the Internet: Digital Networks between 
Capital and the Common (Semiotext(e)/MIT Press, 2022). She is also 
co-editor, with Luciana Parisi, Ezekiel Dixon-Román, and Oana Pârvan, of 
Colonial Fractals: The Racial Politics of Planetary Computation (Duke 
University Press, forthcoming 2027). She serves on the editorial boards 
of Theory, Culture & Society, Subjectivity, and Studi Culturali, is a 
member of the CCB (Critical Computation Bureau) and is Director of the 
Interuniversity Research Centre on Transnational Technocultures (CRiTT).


ABOUT THE JOURNAL

Media Theory was established in 2017 as an independent (scholar-led), 
online and (libre) open access journal of peer-reviewed, theoretical 
interventions into all aspects of media and communications. Resolutely 
international and interdisciplinary in scope, the journal encourages 
submissions that critically engage with the theoretical frameworks and 
concepts that tend to be taken for granted in national or disciplinary 
perspectives. Following the inaugural issue of ‘Manifestos’ from the 
editorial collective, the journal has published special issues on 
‘Geospatial Memory’, ‘Revolting Media, ‘Rethinking Affordance’, 
‘Mediating Presents’, ‘Into the Air’, ‘Pharmacologies of Media’, 
‘Critique, Postcritique and the Present Conjuncture’, ‘Seeing 
Photographically’, ‘Violent Labour’ and ‘Stimulating Media’, as well as 
special sections on Ed Herman, Paul Virilio, Michel Serres, Lauren 
Berlant and Charles W. Mills, with forthcoming issues on ‘Videogame 
Theory’, ‘Media Architectures’ and ‘Transnational Technocultures’. 
Although the journal privileges an emphasis on theory, the editors are 
not only concerned with theory for theory’s sake. Rather, we are 
interested in how theoretically-informed and -engaged interventions can 
contribute to the interpretation of empirical research and critique, as 
well as to the deprovincialization of theoretical debate – helping us 
understand, rather than dismiss or describe, objects of critique, and 
making us reconsider the validity, efficacy and legitimacy of our own 
particular methodological approaches.


ABOUT MEDITERRANEAN TECHNOCULTURES (MEDTECH): Critical and Alternative 
Technocultural Practices and Imaginaries in the Mediterranean Region
The project Mediterranean Technocultures (MedTech) aims to research the 
Mediterranean as a crucial domain wherefrom to critique the global 
technological monoculture (BigTech) that currently dominates the planet 
as well as to observe technodiversity through a specific focus on 
audiovisual media and computational technologies. The idea of a 
technological monoculture refers to the global hegemony exercised by 
BigTech or GAFAM (Google, Apple, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft). The notion of 
technodiversity refers to the possibility of imagining different 
cultural and epistemic models of technology (Hui, 2020). MedTech departs 
from the discourse according to which the Mediterranean should be seen 
as a marginal space with relation to the advanced technocultures of 
nations such as the United States, China, Japan, South Korea or Northern 
Europe. It instead considers the Mediterranean as a space of 
articulation of critical perspectives on technology, as well as a site 
of emergence of technodiversity (Hui, 2020; Chambers and Terranova, 
2021). In so doing, the project also aims to contribute to the 
development of an interdisciplinary and transcultural approach to the 
mapping of “another Mediterranean” (Chambers and Cariello, 2019). The 
scientific approach is sensitive to the relation between the global and 
the local, control and appropriation, hegemonic and subaltern (Penley 
and Ross, 1991). MedTech investigates the distinctive characteristics of 
Mediterranean technocultures, connecting critical technocultural 
responses to BigTech’s hegemony (including technologies of surveillance, 
warfare and control) to the study of Mediterranean technodiversity in 
audiovisual and computational technologies. Examples include cultural 
and linguistic practices such as media an-archaeologies, audiovisual 
software and media, digital infrastructures, cryptocurrencies, hacklabs, 
social media cultures, etc.


ABOUT THE VENUE

Palazzo Dumesnil (Rooms: Sala Conference and Sala Archivio Storico) – 
University of Naples "L'Orientale"
Palazzo Dumesnil is one of the historic buildings of the University of 
Naples "L'Orientale", a leading institution internationally recognized 
for its excellence in the study of languages, cultures, and societies. 
Situated within walking distance of the city's renowned waterfront, 
including the majestic Castel dell’Ovo as well as Piazza dei Martiri, 
one of Naples' most elegant historic squares, the palace combines the 
architectural grandeur of a nineteenth-century aristocratic residence 
with its present role as a vibrant academic venue. It is also the seat 
of the University's Rectorate, housing the office of the Rector and the 
central administrative offices.


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