After the inaugural edition of the European Conference on Critical Edtech Studies (ECCES) successfully took place in June 2025 in Zurich, we are happy to announce that on September 16–18, 2026 (pending final confirmation) there will be an ECCES Futuring Studio, titled „Shaping (Better) Educational and Societal Futures“. The Futuring Studio will be held at Helmut-Schmidt-University Hamburg. Proposals for contributions can be submitted until February 15, 2026 (8pm CET). For further information please see our Call for Contributions.
Conference Theme
Facing an ongoing intensification of planetary crises, expanding attacks on democracy as well as rising global inequality, education scholars around the world have called for a much more serious engagement in shaping different educational and societal futures, oriented towards sustainability, justice, diversity and care. Within the more specific field of Critical Edtech Studies (CES), scholars have accordingly proble-matized how the design and implementation of education technology (edtech) have, in contrast to the optimistic promises of extensive societal enhancement, also contributed to the maintenance, if not the amplification, of inequality, injustice and planetary harms, oftentimes caused by nonreflexive pedagogical adoption and/or policies. At the same time, scholars have also emphasized the enormous transformative potential of edtech, if designed and implemented in more planetary-, equity- and power-sensitive (e.g., feminist, speculative, creative or antagonist) ways. There has, in that regard, also been an increasing engagement in professionalization activities that take broader societal, political, economic or ecological interrelations of digital education in general, and different edtech products in particular, more strongly into account. These approaches and activities commonly share the idea of close collaboration and co-creation between research, practice, policymakers, edtech developers, intermediaries (e.g., NGOs), and communities. Collaboration and co-creation are thereby regarded as key, not only to overcome persisting structures, but also to put differently imagined futures more easily into practice, also by creating the space to include voices otherwise marginalized from decision-making. Critique is, in that regard, understood as productive, generative, reparative, and collaborative in the development of education technologies, as opposed to merely exposing or ‘debunking’ existing flaws and/or assumptions. At the same time, the key areas where CES must still substantially improve and innovate include the cultivation of cross-field alliances in order to achieve more substantial impact on actual educational practices.
You can download the Call for Contributions here.
Letzte Änderung: 12. November 2025