[ Informação Responsive Project Team ]

CALL FOR PAPERS – “Innovations that increase co-creation, responsiveness and the impact of citizen voice in social services (28-30 Jan 2026” | ISCSP-ULisboa) | DEADLINE: 12 December 2025

The Call for Papers for the Final International Conference of the Horizon Europe Project RESPONSIVE – Innovations that increase co-creation, responsiveness and the impact of citizen voice in social services is now available.

You may consult the full text attached or via the abstract submission platform available at https://responsive.iscsp.ulisboa.pt/2-1_submisson.php

The conference will take place between 28–30 January 2026, in Lisbon, at the Institute for Social and Political Sciences (ISCSP-ULisboa). Below you will find the key dates for submissions and registration:

– 12 December 2025 – Deadline for abstracts
– 22 December 2025 – Confirmation of acceptance
– 08 January 2026 – Deadline for speakers to confirm attendance
– 20 January 2026 – Deadline for non-speakers to register to attend the conference
– 28-30 January 2026 – Conference in Lisbon

This three-day event will bring together a diverse community of decision-makers, social services professionals, policymakers, researchers, and activists to share knowledge and reflect on experiences with the aim of enhancing the responsiveness of professionals, services, and policymakers to the contributions and ideas of citizens who use social services.

We warmly invite you to join us in Lisbon to reflect on pathways towards a more democratic and responsive social services across Europe.
Registration is free of charge, but mandatory. Additional details are available on the Conference’s website: https://responsive.iscsp.ulisboa.pt/index.php
Stay tuned to our emails and follow us on social media @iscsp_ulisboa.

 

[ Informação Karl M. van Meter ]

Call for Contributors – “Conspiracy Theories & the Information Society” (edited collection)

Deadline: 15 January 2026

Editors:

Robert Spinelli (rspinelli@ncis.org); Matthew N. Hannah (matthew.hannah@wisc.edu)

Abstract:

Information is not value neutral. It has become a frontline in the battle over truth and reality, which is ravaging our societies. In a time when information is an essential component structuring online life, we also see the rise and viral spread of conspiracy theories. To understand the contours of this spread, this collection will bring together scholars from different disciplinary perspectives to offer a thorough analysis of the impact that conspiracy theories and mis/disinformation have within the information society. We are living in a society completely structured by our access to and application of information, in an age of unprecedented information overload, and the importance of being able to properly sift through incomplete data, misinformation and disinformation is overwhelming.

Robert Hassan describes the information society as a space in which “digital information is, at its root, ideological” (p. 1). His approach to the information society is to understand it “through an interpretive framework of political economy that makes connections to the relevant social, political, economic and technological structures and institutions” (viii). In the same spirit, we seek contributions that map the extreme and conspiracist contours of the information society, applying a variety of quantitative and qualitative research methodologies to engage the pervasive challenges offered by conspiracy culture within a society completely reliant on digital information. To address these major social issues, it is necessary to develop a multifaceted, multidisciplinary approach to understand and combat them. Although librarians, scholars, and educators address various forms of literacy in their curricula, it is vital to examine the issues inherent in conspiracy culture through a multiplicity of lenses to analyze the massive social and political issues facing us in a time of information abundance.

This collection is interested in a wide range of approaches from both inside and outside academia: information practitioners; information, communication, and media scholars; historians and political scientists; computer, data, and information scientists; government agencies and policy writers; NGO and public institutions; disaster preparedness groups; and other communities invested in better understanding conspiracism within the information society. Several styles of writing and research will be accepted by contributors: theoretical humanistic writing is adept at laying out and analyzing broad themes of the topic; data-driven research resulting from surveys and case studies provides a granular look at how conspiracy theories are affecting both individuals and communities; pedagogical solutions illuminate a path toward working with people affected by conspiratorial thinking. Our contributors, with their multiple roles as purveyors, instructors, and thinkers of and about information, will be uniquely suited to the task of working with stories and data and turning these narratives into solution-based strategies to understand, analyze, and fight conspiracism. It is not the task of this book to debunk conspiracy theories; rather, this book will seek to examine, explore, comprehend and point a way forward that will help to undermine the damaging effects of information disorders.

Suggested topics may include examining conspiracy/misinformation in/roles for/relationships to, etc.:

– Information overload & culture
– Psychology of conspiracy theories
– Mis/disinformation as political tool
– Conspiracism and consensus politics
– Visual analysis of conspiracist aesthetics on social media
– Data analysis of mis/disinformation content on social media
– Demographic study of users engaging with conspiracy content
– Conspiratorial public spheres and/or the culture war
– Stifling or mitigating the flow of mis/disinformation
– Cultural influences of conspiracy theories online
– Ethnolographic exploration of how engagement crosses into real life
– Sociological analyses of the impact of conspiracism
– Analyses of the attention economy, platform capitalism, or recommendation algorithms driving conspiracist content
– Information warfare or other online militancy
– Gender and sexuality studies and the “manosphere” or “trad” communities
– Emerging online conspiracy theories, extremist movements, or other information challenges
– “Do your own research” communities or movements
– Philosophy of the “red pill” or “redpilling”
– Artificial intelligence and its discontents

Details

Proposals between 250 and 500 words, CVs and brief author bios (50-80 words), should be submitted to Robert Spinelli (rspinelli@ncis.org) & Matthew N. Hannah (matthew.hannah@wisc.edu) by January 15, 2026.

The editors will then review all submitted proposals and notify applicants by January 30, 2026. Chapters should be approximately between 7,000-8,000 words, and first drafts of completed manuscripts will be due June 6, 2026. The expected publication date will be in 2027.

Contact Information

Editors:

Robert Spinelli (rspinelli@ncis.org); Matthew N. Hannah (matthew.hannah@wisc.edu)

 

[ Informação Maria Mendes ]

ISA_ Inequalities and the city. Old Issues, New Challenges. RC21 2026

Deadline for abstracts submissions: December 29th, 2025, 23:59 (CET, Vienna)
https://rc21-vienna2026.org/call-for-abstracts/

#65 Mobility Regimes between daily travel practices and Migration. Navigating Inequalities, Diversities, and Accessibility in Contemporary Urban Transformations
Session chair(s): Maria Manuela Mendes (CIES-Iscte e ISCSP, Ulisboa), Matteo Colleoni Luca, Simone Caiello Stefania Toma (Romanian Institute for Research on National Minorities / Babes-Bolyai University)

Format type: Regular Panel

Description: Contemporary inequalities in Europe and beyond are increasingly produced at the intersection of mobility, migration, and spatial organization. On the one hand, international, transnational, and internal mobilities reshape the social and spatial fabric of cities, metropolitan regions, and semi-urban/rural territories, bringing to the fore issues of diversity, categorical inequalities (class, gender, ethnicity, migrant status), and differentiated access to housing, services, and education. On the other hand, these mobility practices unfold within what has been conceptualized as mobility regimes (Kesselring, 2014) — configurations of infrastructures, policy frameworks, socio-technical arrangements, and governing narratives that determine who can move, how, where, and at what cost. Such regimes are never neutral: they are historically and politically situated and deeply implicated in the (re)production of social and spatial inequalities.

As a result, cities and metropolitan regions are become sites where inclusion and exclusion are both produced and contested.
The plurality of contemporary inequalities asks for a nuanced understanding of how mobility regimes shape both the movement of people and the (re)production of social inequalities in daily lives (from working conditions to reproductive activities and leisure) across European territories and beyond.

To understand how urban and spatial planning, mobility governance, and policy frameworks influence social stratification and everyday practices is essential to pay particular attention to conditions of social disadvantages, like transport poverty (Lucas et al., 2016) that encompasses economic, spatial, temporal, and infrastructural barriers that limit individual’s ability to reach essential opportunities such as work, education, housing, services, and social networks.
We welcome contributions grounded in direct experiences of migrants and mobile populations, as well as theoretical reflections, empirical research., and comparative perspectives that critically engage with experiences of mobile subjects, the way spatialized inequalities are produced and / contested, and how governance and policy responses mitigate or exacerbate multiple marginalities.

We invite papers that address the following questions (but are not limited to):

• How do migration and everyday mobility practices interact with existing mobility regimes to reconfigure social and spatial landscapes across urban, peri-urban, and rural/metropolitan contexts and what are the lived experiences of migrants navigating these regimes?
• How do policy and governance arrangements respond to (or fail to address) the right to the city, housing, and service access for diverse and mobile populations?
• In what ways do transport and accessibility infrastructures intersect with class, gender, ethnicity, and migrant status to reproduce or alleviate spatialized and multi-dimensional inequalities, within restrictive mobility regimes and transport poverty?
• How can empirically grounded studies inform forward-looking, justice-oriented interventions in mobility, spatial planning, and urban–regional development?
• What new methodological and comparative approaches can be used to capture the mobility-related accessibility, the interplay between physical/digital infrastructures, and lived experiences of inequality?

 

[ Informação Carlos Nunes Silva/CNS ULisboa ]

Call for Abstracts | 10th International Conference on ‘Urban e-Planning’
(Virtual / Online – 8-10 April 2026)

The increasing prevalence of digital innovations presents both significant opportunities and complex challenges for urban and regional planners globally. The 10th International Conference on ‘Urban e-Planning’ brings together interdisciplinary research on innovative theory and practice in Urban e-Planning, including new methods and digital tools. The Conference also welcomes brief, practice-focused presentations.

We welcome theoretical and empirical submissions on, but not limited to, the following themes :

Track 1 – Smart Urban Governance and e-Planning
Track 2 – Artificial Intelligence in Urban Governance
Track 3 – Citizens e-Participation in Urban Governance
Track 4 – Urban e-Planning and Social Issues
Track 5 – Urban e-Planning, Biodiversity and Climate Emergency
Track 6 – Planning for a Nomad Workforce
Track 7 – Platform Urbanism and the Digital Urban Economy
Track 8 – Decolonising Smart Cities: Towards Plural and Just Digital Futures
Track 9 – The Education of Urban e-Planners and Planning Ethics

Participation is free of charge.
We expect the publication of a selection of the papers.
Deadline for abstract submission: 15 January 2026

More information here (Call for Papers): https://sites.google.com/view/uep2026conference/call-for-papers
Conference website: https://sites.google.com/view/uep2026conference/home