2026, June 24
Online
Overview
Activists, scholars, artists and practitioners across diverse fields have taken computing as an object of critical study for as long as computing has been around. To take computing as an object of critical study is to make arguments and produce knowledge that centers the social and political conditions that make computing possible, and the implications that existing and future technologies will have, with attention to issues of justice, equity, and ethics. This gathering continues a series of listening sessions from ACM SIGCHI that have sought input on how to imagine a Critical Computing Conference that can meet the needs of activists, scholars, artists and practitioners while breaking harmful habits of academic conferences. The gathering begins with a set of round-table discussions featuring issues of critical computing. These are followed by threaded papers (in parallel tracks), in which academic contributions respond to one another before, during, and after the gathering, producing co-authored or multi-voiced works.
Join us at the Online Gathering!
During this fourth gathering, held online, we invite you to collectively imagine what a Critical Computing Conference could and should be. Our aim is to surface values, needs, tensions, and possibilities across communities engaged in critical computing and to experiment with formats that challenge extractive, competitive, and exclusionary academic norms. We ultimately hope to support sustained conversation and collaboration beyond a single event.
Topics and Questions
The sessions at the gathering will engage in topics including, but not limited to, the following themes:
- Critical, feminist, anti-racist, decolonial, and abolitionist approaches to computing
- Computing and its entanglements with labor, capital, governance, and surveillance
- Artistic, activist, and community-based methods for studying and shaping design and engineering formations
- Ethics, justice, and refusal in the design, deployment, and study of computing systems
- Alternative formats of scholarship, review, authorship, and citation
- Care, repair, maintenance, and stewardship in sociotechnical systems
- Histories and futures of critical computing movements
Format
- Introductions: Conveners will open the gathering with an initial discussion of the Critical Computing Conference listening process, its motivations, and goals.
- Threaded Papers: Parallel tracks of interrelated contributions that engage one another across time, potentially resulting in collaborative or multi-voiced publications.
- Roundtable Discussions: Facilitated conversations centered on shared concerns, open questions, and collective reflection.
- Breakout Groups: Small-group sessions designed to elicit concrete input about the structure, values, and practices of a future Critical Computing Conference.
Submissions to the threaded panels have already been selected.
How to Participate
Fill out this registration form to receive the program with zoom links to attend the online gathering on June 24. (Zoom links will be added close to the date of the event).
The preliminary program can be found online.
Timeline
Convenors:
Alex Taylor, University of Edinburgh (Edinburgh, Scotland)
Bono Olgado, University of the Philippines (Manila, Philippines)
Daniela Rosner, University of Washington (Seattle, USA)
Lucy Pei, University of Southern California (Los Angeles, USA)
Luis Fernando Medina Cardona, Universidad Nacional de Colombia (Bogotá, Colombia)
Nassim Parvin, Associate Professor, University of Washington (Seattle, USA)