Please apply using the link below by 2nd June 2025. Applications will be reviewed on rolling basis:
About The Conference
In 2025, digital infrastructure is already a part of our everyday existence. From generative AI shaping communication to geopolitical cyberconflicts and climate-tech entanglements, our connected systems of the Internet carry unprecedented power and risks. The digital sphere is fragmented by platform politics, algorithmic opacity and widening access gaps, reinforcing existing inequalities in new forms. Within this complexity also lies opportunity – an opportunity to not just critique the systems we inherit, but also to actively rewire them.
At Connected Life 2025, we shift the conversation from critique to creation. Under the theme C³ – Connect. Create. Compute., we engage with three core dimensions of this transformation: how we connect across fragmented digital spaces; how we create tools, norms and cultures through design and policy; and how we compute the data and architecture that underpin our digital world. From global governance and grassroots innovation to virtual identities, we foreground interdisciplinary dialogue and practice-based research aimed at reimagining the digital sphere from the ground up.
Through keynote talks, panel discussions, and a poster exhibit, Connected Life offers a multi-dimensional engagement in this one-day conference — connecting people, creating ideas, and computing change. Join us in shaping how we live, design, and act in a deeply connected digital world.
Join us on Thursday, 26th June 2025, in Oxford, UK, to bridge innovative and creative research with practices that explore, design, and evaluate future digital architectures, models of governance, interactions, and interfaces.
The theme of Connect (1), Create (2) and Compute (3) includes:
“Connect” emphasises the importance of building networks and sharing insights across disciplines to enhance understanding of digital phenomena.
“Create” refers to the innovative methodologies and tools developed to study complex online environments and the novel ways social interactions manifest online.
“Compute” highlights the integral role of computational techniques and data analytics in extracting meaningful patterns and trends from vast amounts of digital data.
To encourage diverse and uncommon perspectives, the organising committee of Connected Life 2025 welcomes both speaker and poster proposals from researchers, designers, policymakers, students, and faculty across disciplines, including but not limited to digital humanities, law and technology, critical data studies, science and technology studies, surveillance studies, international relations, design, media and communications, politics, sociology, economics, education, computer science, history, and philosophy. Proposals from individual speakers are welcomed alongside those from multiple contributors.
Proposals and posters which address C³ – Connect. Create. Compute. may include:
- Governance and Infrastructure
- Data Infrastructures and Platform Power
- The globalisation of data flows
- Digital identity systems
- Digital sovereignty and transnational data governance
- Regulating Artificial Intelligence, algorithmic decision-making, and Big Tech
- Data protection and privacy
- Trust and Safety
- Alternative ways of data governance, data commons, and data trusts
- Smart cities
- Digital Society and Empowerment
- Surveillance capitalism and data colonialism
- Digital literacy and the digital divide
- Inclusive and accessible digital practices
- Global data justice
- Ethics in technology design contexts
- AI fairness, accountability, and transparency
- Evolving Digital Markets
- Platform Economies and platform labour
- Digital innovation and entrepreneurship
- Data-driven business models
- AI and Automation in commerce
- Digital retail and e-commerce
- Digital labour and workforce transformation
- Competition regulation and policy in digital markets
- Emerging technologies (e.g. XR, IoT, Digital Twins)
- Creativity and Humanities
- Creative pursuits and digital play
- Gaming technologies, creativity and cognition
- Human-centred design and philosophy
- Architectures, histories and philosophies of the Internet
- Embodied Internet and digital immersion
- Critical code theories