Technology is transforming our world at an unprecedented pace, shaping societies, economies, and cultures in ways that demand critical examination. The Digital Humanism Conference 2025 provides a platform for interdisciplinary dialogue on the profound impact of digitization, exploring both its promises and risks.
Call for Papers
Digital Humanism – Interdisciplinary Science and Research Conference
November 20–21, 2025
MuseumsQuartier – Architekturzentrum Wien, Vienna
https://dighum.org/dighum-res/
(Preliminary Information on Registration now Online)
Submission deadline: July 15, 2025
Notification: September 15, 2025
Final Versions Due: September 30, 2025
Invited Speakers:
+ Gry Hasselbalch, DataEthics.eu
+ Julian Nida-Rümelin, LMU München
+ Hannes Werthner, TU Wien
Aims and Scope
Technology and digitization profoundly shape the world we live in, and the
stakes are high. This call invites papers that explore the complex interplay of
technology and humankind, understanding the fundamental changes, examining the
new opportunities enabled by technological advances as well as the tremendous
risks inherent to digitization, and envisaging the prospects for a better life
in the digitized era. Issues addressed by the conference program will revolve
around digitalization and its entanglement with contemporary social, political,
economic, and cultural developments – from algorithmic governance and
regulation through the role of AI in popular culture to the ever-increasing
permeation of our lives with digital devices. The recent rise of AI has
triggered a heightened awareness of the far-reaching impact of digitization on
our lives, which ranges from numerous beneficial uses to worrisome concerns for
open democratic societies and the lives of their citizens. Technological change
is expanding the boundaries of what is possible. There are strong reasons to be
concerned about the enormous concentration of power, resources, and
prioritization of future AI R&D directions in the hands of very few players.
We define Digital Humanism as an approach that describes, analyzes, and, most
importantly, influences the complex interplay of technology and humankind, for
a better society and life, fully respecting universal human rights.
Addressing these challenges requires interdisciplinary collaboration between a
whole range of domains from computer science to humanities. We invite
contributions that explore all scientific aspects at the complex interplay of
humans and machines in the digitized age. Different research methodologies and
approaches are welcome.
————————————————————————————
Topics
The following topics based on the Vienna Manifesto on Digital Humanism
(https://caiml.org/dighum/dighum-manifesto/#vienna-manifesto-on-digital-humanism)
offer an illustrative, though certainly not exhaustive list of possible fields
to be addressed:
– Philosophical reflections on digitalization
– Governance, regulation, control, and security of AI
– Digital technologies and their impact on democracy and inclusion
– Privacy and freedom of speech in the digital arena
– Rules and laws, effective regulations for technological development
– Accountability, fairness, and transparency of software and algorithms
– The role of tech monopolies, market competitiveness and anti-trust
– Internet governance and digital sovereignty – Automated and human decision making
– Participatory approaches and collective decision-making, computational social choice
– New systems design
– Cross-disciplinary approaches to technological questions, especially collaborations between computer science / informatics and social sciences and the humanities
– New educational curricula, combining knowledge from the humanities, the social sciences, and engineering studies
– Researchers and practitioners and their shared responsibility for the impact of information technologies
– Human-centered AI, human-AI interaction, and human-AI teaming
– Ethical models/frameworks around AI and data, handling of bias
– Environmental costs and climate impacts of digitization/AI
All contributions are welcome that address these topics – from computer
science, AI research, social sciences, law as well as the humanities.
————————————————————————————
Submission Guidelines
DIGHUM 2025 welcomes submissions of long papers (15 pages) or short papers (6
pages) of all types, including:
– Empirical, conceptual, or theoretical
– Technical or system descriptions
– Position papers
The indicated number of pages includes title page, figures, tables, references
and appendix.
All submissions will be peer-reviewed (double-blind) and accepted papers will
appear in the conference proceedings published in the Springer’s Lecture Notes
in Computer Science (LNCS) series. At least one author of each accepted paper
is expected to register for the conference and present the work in person.
Evaluation criteria include scientific rigor, impact, and accessibility for an
interdisciplinary audience.
Submissions must be written in English and be formatted according to Springer’s
guidelines and technical instructions available at:
https://www.springer.com/gp/computer-science/lncs/conference-proceedings-guidelines
Paper submission is enabled via the DIGHUM 2025 easy-chair site:
https://easychair.org/conferences?conf=dighumres25
DIGHUM 2025 will not accept any paper which, at the time of submission, is
under review or has already been published or accepted for publication in a
journal or another conference. These restrictions do not apply to previous
workshops with a limited audience and without archival proceedings. Papers that
include text generated from large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT are
prohibited unless the produced text is presented as a part of the paper’s
experimental analysis. Note that this policy does not prohibit authors from
using LLMs for editing or polishing author-written text.
————————————————————————————
Conference program chairs
Ludger Hagedorn (Institute for Human Sciences/ IWM, Vienna)
Ute Schmid (University of Bamberg)
Susan J. Winter (University of Maryland)
Stefan Woltran (Vienna University of Technology)
Please contact [email protected] with any queries.