Conference

On 15-16 September 2025, the KU Leuven Digital Society Institute (DigiSoc) will host the International Conference for an Inclusive Digital Society (IDS2025) in Leuven (Belgium). This conference provides a forum to exchange knowledge and inspire each other to contribute to a positive digital society.

We invite scholars, citizens, industry professionals, government representatives, and members of non-profit organizations to join us in this crucial conversation, to generate cutting-edge ideas and innovative thinking to properly grasp the polyvocal complexity of our current and future digital society.
During this conference, we will explore how the design, development, implementation, governance, and regulation of digital tools permeate every aspect of our lives, often in invisible yet profound ways, and how this can empower some but equally can harm others. The rapid advancement of technologies, such as big data, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things will certainly not slow down.

Let us shape this positive digital future ourselves and influence our employment, health care, and social interactions, being aware of how it widens the gap between the digital haves and the (often invisible) digital not-haves and poses challenges on polarization and our environment. At this pivotal time, the discourse on digital technologies must transcend binary labels of ‘good’ or ‘bad.’
It is also mindful reflecting on the existence of hybrid realities, where the beginning or end of the digital is difficult to distinguish from the non-digital, which raises existential questions. Approaching the reality of the intersection of technology and society as socio-technical systems demand thoughtful consideration of what is technically feasible and what is socially meaningful and/or acceptable, for whom and in what circumstances.

This conference aims to spark an in-depth debate on envisioning a digital society that respects human values, integrates technology into our social fabric responsibly, and enables a future that harmonizes with our natural environment.

We encourage you to join us in Leuven and to submit your work relevant to co-creating an inclusive, responsible, and sustainable digital future.
 
Topics

We welcome abstracts in the following areas:

Health & well-being

Technology-based interventions can significantly affect people’s lives either by directly influencing their health and well-being (e.g. via preventive medicine), or indirectly by impacting on behaviours such as physical activity, eating habits, sleep and online health information seeking. Digital innovation can be pursued both at the level of clinical applications and at the level of the general population, such as public health initiatives and mobile health (mHealth) applications. Concrete examples include the development of wearables that, combined with patient-specific data, advance personalized medicine, and solutions that can support medical experts in their daily practice (e.g. robotical surgery) and (AI-based) decision making on diagnoses and therapies.

We are witnessing new ways of how health data is generated (e.g. through sensors), monitored (at an individual and societal level), accessed, and shared between patients and health professionals, practitioners, hospitals, or in online patient-centred support groups. Possible applications also reach beyond the strict spheres of health and well-being and include various forms of human enhancement as well as the design of spaces and cities using persuasive approaches that ‘nudge’ people to live or behave healthier.

Although these evolutions can offer many opportunities for (digital) innovation, they also confront us with just as many societal challenges, for instance in terms of technology adoption, misinformation and misleading information, inclusiveness, ethical use of data, stigmatism and privacy. It calls for considering both individual aspects (e.g. respecting personal privacy) as well as societal issues (e.g. linked to the organization of mobile and telehealth programs). It also raises questions about public policy making (e.g. regarding genetic technologies), governance of digital health data, tools and platforms, as well as legal provisions, for instance about what can / may (and cannot or may not) be done with (health) data.


Learning & education

Digital technology is rapidly changing how we learn and are educated, both formally and informally. The opposite is also true: societal challenges, such as globalization, the diversity of student populations and a pandemic, prompt us to rethink learning and education in a blended, increasingly personal, technology-supported model no longer bound by time and location.

Flipped classrooms use digital technology to let students prepare classes at home and optimize interaction during class time. Intelligent tutors use artificial intelligence to automatically adapt teaching strategies to individual needs. Virtual reality and serious games can make education more interactive and increasingly personalized. Hackathons, design-thinking workshops, and maker spaces provide new opportunities for 21st century learning. Online teaching allows reaching learners not able to attend classes physically, and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) operate at the scale of a worldwide learning community.

However, the rapid evolutions challenge us to rethink the fundaments underlying novel training (e.g. finding a consensus on the best method for surgical training) and educational programs (e.g. defining and fostering new digital literacies). Moreover, technology can also stand in the way of the learning experience: it can be a distraction for learners, the use of data-analytics raises concerns of privacy and fair use, and not everyone has equal access to technologies.


Media & culture

Digital media technologies and new mediatized configurations are generating distinctive changes in our social and aesthetic experiences. This raises questions such as how digital media can shape culture and how digital media is shaped by culture. Other questions relate to the development of new concepts for integrating media technologies with the physical environment.

The involvement of artists, designers and the public in the research and development of advanced digital technologies as well as in various knowledge production models have created new artistic, research and democratizing opportunities. Arts & Design Research increasingly works as a catalyst for the advancement of the cultural and creative industries. In order to take full advantage of its social innovation and economic potential, there is a need to combine arts, research and creativity with entrepreneurship and innovation.

IDS2025 wants you to explore to what extent a ‘techno/art/science’ framework proves capable in the interpretation of, and experimentation with, digital media, how it can inform current theory and how our understanding of digital media can contribute to social and cultural change in a positive way.


Democracy & civic engagement

By providing a space for public debate, online digital media have become important tools for freedom of expression, which is indispensable for genuine democracy and civic engagement. New information and communication technologies, and the Internet in particular, provide opportunities to strengthen the participation, initiative and involvement of as well as interaction with citizens in national, regional and local public life and in decision-making processes.

The great potential of the Internet also has its downsides, including a digital divide, lack of quality control and concentration of the market. Online platforms, which facilitate interactions between Internet users, possess great technical power to control the free flow of information. This power can be misused to turn online platforms into tools for misinformation, propaganda and manipulation. Misinformation on social networks spreads significantly farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the correct information, most of all when it concerns false political news.


Work & organization

Organisation and jobs are currently experiencing radical transformations induced by technological innovation. Filling the scientific gap on the exact impact of digital technologies on work and addressing the increasing number of contradicting studies about the transformations that organisations and jobs are undergoing in relation to digitalisation, is a topical and pressing issue.

In particular, there is a current lack of understanding how such technologies are embedded in different organisational settings, and with what effects on employment, skills and job quality. Yet there are also lots of unexplored territories for optimizing job content, job design as well as pursuing participative technological and organisational processes.

How can we ensure that technological applications will foster societal aims, while at the same time cradle high quality jobs and high-performance organisations?



Format of contributions


All topics and submission formats are open to various kinds of research and reflective practices, from all realms of society (academia, industry, civil society, etc.).

We welcome:

Short talks, featured as a 12-minute presentation (followed by a 8-minute discussion), or as a poster contribution. Three types of short talk submission are possible:
Research outcome contributions: theoretical, conceptual, practical, design-oriented, art-based, action research, etc.
Work-in-progress contributions: representing partial achievements or intermediate research results. They can be of any kind: theoretical, conceptual, practical, design-oriented, art-based, action research, etc.
Innovative ideas in their early stage: idea contributions are expressions of yet-to-be-developed approaches, with pros/cons, not yet consolidated. Ideas contributions are intended for debate and audience feedback.
Workshops or other (co-)creative sessions. Authors can specify which specific format, time, or material they need.

 
Submission guidelines

Please ensure that your abstract describes how your contribution will respond to the objectives and framing of this call and give 5 keywords.
Abstracts are to be written in English and should be submitted electronically using the Conftool abstract management system: https://www.conftool.pro/inclusivedigitalsociety2025

Abstracts have to be submitted by 15 February 2025 (23:59 CEST) at the latest. Abstracts received after this date will not be evaluated.
Maximum length of the title: 100 characters (spaces included).
Maximum length of the abstract: 1000 words.
Authors should select at least one topic. Selection of multiple topics is possible for interdisciplinary work.
If you would like to discuss any aspect of this call in advance of submitting your proposal, please contact info@inclusivedigitalsociety.eu.