[Commlist] CFP: SSAAANZ 2026 Conference - Screen Studies Association of Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand - 'Making Do'

*CFP: SSAAANZ 2026 Conference*


      *DEADLINE EXTENDED UNTIL 28 JUNE 2026*

*The Biennial Screen Studies Association of Australia and Aotearoa New 
Zealand (SSAAANZ) Conference will be held at The University of Melbourne 
from 1st to 4th December 2026.*

‍/The theme for the 2026 SSAAANZ Conference is Making Do. This year’s 
conference will be held in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia at the 
University of Melbourne, with a pre-fix day for ECR and HDR members on 1 
December 2026. This year’s SSAAANZ Conference will be held in person./

*CALL FOR PAPERS*

Making do is a generative act. To “make do” means to seize agency, 
create, act and enact. In common parlance, to make do is typically 
understood as a response to a condition of deficit, at best a stoic act 
and, at worst, subservient to fixed conditions. The awkwardness of the 
phrase itself,/make do/, mirrors analogous phrases like “get by”, “eke 
out” or “scape by”, verbally enacting the constraints they signify.

The 2026 SSAAANZ Conference considers the creative, subversive and 
abundant possibilities of/making do/in screen studies and screen 
cultures. Making do involves leveraging existing assets, foraging, and 
crafting: films, multihyphenate careers, classroom or on-set resources. 
It is to bricolage what is at hand, to give new life to old materials. 
Making do is to mend what is broken, repair what can be fixed, and find 
new uses for the obsolete or redundant, including technologies, critical 
theories, genres. Making do can be a tactic: it gives agency to the 
disenfranchised, enables resistance when resources are scarce.

Making do also invokes the limitations of time. We make do with what we 
have when time is scarce, or when the passage of time has left us with 
resources that are partial or non-extent. To make do is to offer a 
working theory, to speculate, and to embrace unusual forms of evidence. 
In this way, it is an engagement with time: time is leveraged; 
hypotheses are posed for future re-makings and re-doings.

This conference focalises making, doing, and creative problem solving in 
screen practice, theories, histories, and policies. We invite papers 
that consider how screen studies is a process of making do:

  *

    What “making do” means in screen theory and practice

  *

    Critical or creative theories of incompletion, speculation,
    prediction, or imagination

  *

    Cross cultural interpretations of making do

  *

    Indigenous screen histories of making do within dominant systems

  *

    Making/ado/: celebrating, making a fuss

  *

    The incomplete archive; archives subject to environmental,
    financial, political, or social pressures

  *

    Amateur, experimental, and activist filmmaking

  *

    Making do without enough money, time, resources

  *

    Screen praxes and pedagogies in the context of neoliberalism

  *

    Making do in an age of technological disruption and generative
    artificial intelligence

  *

    Piecing together and making do as methodology

  *

    An ethics of making do in practice and research

We invite papers from across the disciplinary spectrum of screen 
studies, including (but not limited to):

  *

    Cinema and television studies

  *

    Game studies and interactive media

  *

    Animation

  *

    Documentary and nonfiction screen media

  *

    Video art, multimedia, and immersive media (VR/AR)

  *

    Screenwriting and production studies

  *

    Video essay and videographic criticism

  *

    Creative practice research

  *

    Screen and creative labour

  *

    Screen environments and policy

  *

    Screen history, theory, and criticism

  *

    Screen industries, production, and distribution

  *

    National, transnational, and postcolonial screen industries

  *

    Reception, audiences, and screen cultures

Proposals for individual presentations, pre-constituted panels or 
workshops should include a 200-word abstract per paper, a 50-word bio 
per presenter, up to 5 external references and 3-5 keywords. Papers will 
be expected to be 20 minutes in length with time for questions. Standard 
panels should include up to 3, 20-minute papers, although alternative 
formats can be proposed; please contact conference organisers with queries.

*
*

*Proposals are due 28 June 2026 via the portal:*

*
*

//SSAAANZ 2026 Abstract Submission Portal//

<https://forms.cloud.microsoft/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=z_NbDvQft0aRdlLFOMIqTf3KNeJdfMFGpmb0vzevLEdUNFZFS1g1SktMQ05PTTFXNk5PTExaSVpHVC4u>

Please note, SSAAANZ Membership is required to present at this 
conference. The new Membership year begins 1 July, 2026. For more 
information on membership, visit the SSAAANZ website 
<https://www.ssaaanz.com/>.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact the conference 
organisers (atssaaanz-2026 /at/ unimelb.edu.au) 
<mailto:(ssaaanz-2026 /at/ unimelb.edu.au)>.

*Conference Organising Committee: Dr Janice Loreck, Dr Kirsten Stevens, 
Dr Nonie May, Dr Duncan Caillard, Dr Alicia Byrnes, Dr Fann Goh, Dr 
Cristóbal Escobar Duenas, Izzy Kane, Alex Williams.*

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