Category: Conferences

ICA Regional Conference: Global Communication Shifts and Implications for Africa (Nigeria)

Conferences

Global Communication Shifts and Implications for Africa, International Communication Association Nigeria Chapter conference, 24-25 March 2026, Nile University, Abuja, Nigeria.

The global communication landscape is undergoing far-reaching transformations driven by rapid media and technological change, shifting geo-political power relations, intensifying climate pressures, and evolving cultural and religious narratives. These transformations do not unfold uniformly across regions. In Africa, they intersect with colonial legacies, uneven development, youthful demographics, gendered power relations, religious pluralism, and heightened vulnerability to climate change. As a result, Africa is not only embedded within global communication flows but also constitutes a critical site where global communication shifts are negotiated, contested, and redefined.

CFP NCA Public Dialogue & Deliberation Division 2026

Conferences

Call for submissions: Public Dialogue and Deliberation Division (PD3), National Communication Association, 19-22 November, 2026, New Orleans, LA, USA. Deadline: 25 March 2026.

The Public Dialogue and Deliberation division (PD3) is a vibrant and growing community of scholars, teachers, and practitioners who research, conceptualize, and facilitate public dialogue and deliberation, to support democratic engagement and social justice. They invite your contributions for the 112th NCA convention to be held in New Orleans, from November 19-22, 2026.

They welcome contributions that engage meaningfully with the 2026 NCA convention theme “MOVE/MENTS in Communication” and that demonstrate the rich potentials for public dialogue and deliberation scholarship, teaching, and practice. The theme of “MOVE/MENTS in Communication” invites us to consider how we are people on the move, prompting questions of “both/and” thinking. They encourage submissions to consider social, cultural, and political movements that reflect the rich potentiality, spaces, and challenges of dialogue and deliberation work. Following with the theme, the division welcomes submissions that question and examine how dialogue and deliberation moves us to action; what limits exist in research and practice; and what openings we should move into to discover new opportunities. The division has much to contribute to these conversations.

NOTE: All divisions of NCA are currently calling for submissions – see the formal announcement here.

CFP Japan-US Communication Association 2026

ConferencesCall for submissions: Japan-US Communication Association, held as part of National Communication Association’s convention, 19-22 November 2026, New Orleans, LA, USA. Deadline: 25 March 2026.

The Japan-U.S. Communication Association (JUCA) invites submissions for competitive review for the 112th NCA Annual Convention (November 19–22, 2026, in New Orleans, Louisiana). Submitted work may address issues in any area of communication, including communication technology, social media, pop culture, journalism and mass communication, interpersonal/ small-group/organizational communication, rhetoric, politics, health, peace, gender, and critical/cultural studies. All methods are welcome. However, they must be related to Japan or Japanese people/culture in some way, such as Japanese indigenous communication, Japan–U.S. communication or relations, and communication between Japanese and people of any nation, not just the United States. They encourage submitters to embrace the 2026 convention theme, “MOVE/MENTS in Communication,” in their work.

CFP International Rhetoric Workshop 2026 (Argentina)

Conferences

Call for proposals: International Rhetoric Workshop: Rhetorical Flows: Building Transnational Solidarities and Cultures of Resistance, Buenos
Aires, Argentina, 5-7 August 2026. Deadline: 21 March 2026.

The Planning Committee for the 5th Biennial International Rhetoric Workshop invites international PhD students, emerging scholars, and established researchers to come together and consider the myriad ways that our contemporary and established traditions of rhetorical theory, pedagogy, and criticism inform global flows of meaning-making.

In the heart of Buenos Aires, at the Centro Cultural Paco Urondo (Institute of Linguistics, Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, UBA), the workshop will center on the theme, “Rhetorical Flows: Building Transnational Solidarities and Cultures of Resistance,” inviting participants to reflect critically with and from a city that has long been a site of poetic militancy, political mobilization, and intercultural exchange. Named for Francisco “Paco” Urondo — poet, journalist, academic, and activist who fused literary creativity with resistance to authoritarianism — this Center locates us amid a legacy of words as weapons, ideas as action, and networks of solidarity that transcend borders and boundaries. Buenos Aires itself, with its histories of migration, contestation, memory, and re­appropriations of public space, offers a vital ground for exploring how rhetorical practices flow across languages, geographies, traditions, time, peoples, and cultures. We welcome proposals that draw on this spirit: whether tracing the circulation of rhetorical forms, investigating collaborative practices of dissent, or imagining new solidarities that respond to both local and global urgencies.

This year’s theme, “Rhetorical Flows: Building Transnational Solidarities & Cultures of Resistance,” prompts us to examine the notions of:

  • Solidarity in a global, yet increasingly divided world; and
  • Strategies of rebellion against—and critical engagements with—the gaps between the affluent and the poor, technology and nature, artificiality and authenticity, generations and communities.

    In preparation for the 5th International Rhetoric Workshop 2026, organizers invite submissions on the themes of solidarity, transnationality, and resistance.

CFP Global Communication and Global Governance (China)

Conferences

Call for submissions: Global Communication and Global Governance, Xiamen University, China, 29-31 May 2026. Deadline: 1 March 2026.

Xiamen University is pleased to announce an international communication conference on “Global Communication and Global Governance,” organized in collaboration with members of the National Communication Association (NCA) and leaders from the Communication University of China (CUC). The conference will be held at Xiamen University, China, from May 29 to 31, 2026. Under this overarching theme, organizers invite research presentations that engage broadly with the communication discipline, particularly within three thematic tracks; the one most likely to be relevant to followers of the Center for Intercultural Dialogue is:

Theme 2: Video Trends in Intercultural and International Communication

From short-form video, proliferating entertainment platforms, and livestreaming to documentaries, viral clips, and transnational media flows, video has become a central site of cultural expression, negotiation, and contestation. This track foregrounds video as a key mode of symbolic action in intercultural and international communication, inviting scholarship that examines how video technologies and practices shape representation, identity, power relations, and cross-cultural understanding. They invite scholarship on platform cultures, digital storytelling, creator and influencer economies, diasporic media, and the transnational circulation of video across linguistic and cultural boundaries, foregrounding dialogue on how evolving video practices are transforming intercultural communication. They welcome perspectives that critically engage how contemporary video trends both enable and constrain intercultural and international dialogue in an increasingly mediated and contested global environment.

CFP ICA Virtual Preconference: Media and Communication in Global Latinidades (2026)

Conferences

Call for extended abstracts: Media and Communication in Global Latinidades, International Communication Association VIRTUAL Preconference, 3 June 2026. Deadline: 15 February 2026.

This preconference examines the production, distribution, and consumption of media and communication in global Latinidades. It follows up to the six preconferences held in the context of the 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025 Annual Meetings of the International Communication Association – on “Digital Journalism in Latin America” in 2019, on “Digital Media in Latin America” in 2020, on “Digital Media in Latinx and Latin America” in 2021, and on “Media & Communication in Global Latinidades” in 2022-2025.

This 8th edition will continue to center on media and communication practices of the Latinx and Latin American experience globally. Despite its long history, research about Latinx and Latin American topics — largely made by Latinx and Latin American researchers worldwide — tends to be underrepresented in communication scholarship in general, and in ICA in particular. As such, the preconference will address the theme of media and communication in local, global and/or transnational Latinx and Latin American experiences, such as those related to issues of access, practices, representations, markets, technologies, and more.

CFP The Politics of Intercomprehension (Belgium)

Conferences

Call for extended abstracts: The politics of intercomprehension, Université de Mons, Mons, Belgium, 18-19 June 2026. Deadline: 15 January 2026.

Studies of language acquisition, language education and other contexts of multilingualism present intercomprehension as the phenomenon of understanding, or being understood, through different modes of communication. It is a transdisciplinary and “polyhedral concept”: researchers employ distinct formulations, but all play with the (inter)action of understanding in contexts of difference. This has real political stakes, though they have not always been acknowledged. What does it mean to understand a message, as it relates to power and recognition? What does it mean to understand a person, or to understand each other? Is understanding always necessary? And when (and for whom) is it a privilege? The aim of this two-day conference is to tug at the ideological threads woven into intercomprehension and unfasten it from its purely linguistic interpretation to achieve a transdisciplinary understanding. We hope that this gathering of different academic and activist perspectives will engender a more inclusive framing of the concept.

In the Global North, linguistic intercomprehension is understood as the process of an interlocutor understanding unknown languages within the same linguistic family as their primarily used languages. It has been lauded as a practice subversive to monolingual norms and aligned with European values, without much contextualization of the colonial ontology underpinning European frameworks of multilingualism and multiculturalism. Projects of minority language revitalization have increasingly promoted intercomprehension as a tool for democratic collaboration, but its consequences for linguistically-isolated communities (e.g. Euskera in Euskal Herria, which does not belong to the same linguistic family as neighboring minority languages) has not been explored. What are the benefits and limitations to such practices? How does increased technological intervention transform these practices? Furthermore, we invite contributions that critically explore how politics of intercomprehension are enacted for vulnerable groups, particularly when understanding and intelligibility are transformed into responsibilities rather than rights. For instance, situations of migration and (im)mobility offer unique contexts to further understand how intercomprehension happens when people are mixed together or forced apart.

Organizers invite participants to analyze the relationships between intercomprehension and different conceptualizations of multilingualism. Of particular interest is the moral and ideological work that surrounds this intersection. For example, does the application of intercomprehension practices signify a more democratic future for language users, or are its liberatory aspects overstated, as Jürgen Jaspers warned with translanguaging (2018)? Moreover, the ontological limits of linguistic intercomprehension seem to be restrained to human multilingualism. How can the “animal turn” in sociolinguistics (Cornips: 2025) contribute to theorizing intercomprehension as a distributed and emergent property between sociomaterial actors, human and non-human?

This conference welcomes creative approaches to questions such as these to understand the political and ideological contours of a multilingual future based in intercomprehension.

CFP International Conference on Religion and Intercultural Dialogue 2026 (Indonesia)

ConferencesCall for abstracts: International Conference on Religion and Intercultural Dialogue, 19-20 May 2026, Jakarta Raya, Indonesia. Submission deadline: 29 April 2026.

The (ICRICD-26) aims to be the all-so-necessary rocket fuel of progress for the field of Religion and Intercultural Dialogue by providing everyone from students and educators to researchers, entrepreneurs, and industry professionals, the inspiration, intellectual stimulation, and radical ingenuity that they need to be able to go out there and achieve big things. From invigorating keynote speeches and research presentation sessions to pathbreaking workshops, debates, networking sessions, exhibits, and more, the (ICRICD-26) will prove to be the accelerant of progress that the world will attribute all success in Religion and Intercultural Dialogue to in the years to come.

Although there is a certain degree of progress that is in existence in the discipline of Religion and Intercultural Dialogue at present, the pace of progress isn’t something that anybody engaged in the field is proud of. Every reason for this slower-than-expected speed of development can be summed up as being a result of this one major hindrance to progress – the lack of motivation and the absence of a motivating factor.

CFP ICA Preconference: Rethinking Global Discourses of Racial Inequality (South Africa)

ConferencesCall for abstracts: Preconference: Rethinking Global Discourses of Racial Inequality, 4 June 2026, Cape Town South Africa. Submission deadline: 15 February 2026.

Organizers invite submissions for an in-person pre-conference titled, “Rethinking Global Discourses of Racial Inequality,” at the International Communication Association’s 2026 meeting, jointly organized by the Language & Social Interaction (LSI), Intercultural Communication (ICC), and Ethnicity & Race in Communication (ERIC) divisions.

This pre-conference responds to the current global moment, marked by intersecting discourses of racism, resistance, justice, and empowerment. Across societies, renewed attention to racial inequalities has sparked calls to reimagine the conceptual and methodological tools we use to study how race is constituted, normalized, and contested in communication practices.

Their aim is to create an interdisciplinary and supportive space where all participants (particularly students and early-career scholars) can share their work, receive constructive feedback, and build networks for collaboration across divisions and disciplines. By bringing together scholars from LSI, ICC, and ERIC, organizers seek to advance cross-divisional dialogue and develop innovative approaches to understanding and transforming global discourses of race and inequality.

CFP Theorizing Communication in, of, and from the Balkans (Online)

ConferencesCall for participants: Theorizing Communication in, of, and from the Balkans, 27-28 May 2026. Interest form due: 20 January 2026 (Extended to 30 January)

Responding to the academic dominance of Western theorizing of communication, this summer intensive aims to “come back to basics” and activate Balkan place-based knowledges to wonder together: What counts as communication in the first place and in this place? Who and what communicates? What forms of communication feel un/familiar and un/necessary? How is communication shaped by and how does it shape creative, educational, civic and political activities and processes, difference and belonging, community building and resilience, and (responses to) local and global crises and conflicts?

This summer intensive will welcome participants to inhabit together the in-betweens of the Balkans as a rich borderlands locale for communication theorizing, so that we can chart new
place-based questions and paths for exploring them. We hope to foster a multinational, interdisciplinary, and intercultural scholarly community around shared interests in questions of
communication in the region. Organizers think of communication very broadly and welcome scholars and practitioners of any academic background who are actively engaged in analyzing, creating, and/or theorizing from and with Balkan (Southeastern European) perspectives and experiences.

In this two-day intensive, participants will first learn about culture-centered approaches (CCAs) and borderlands theorizing as models to elevate context-specific ways of knowing and being and how they are expressed and negotiated with/in communication. Workshops during the first day will focus on methodologies for culture-centered theorizing, such as ethnography, narrative and arts-based research, and critical realist analysis of media. During the second day, we will gather in participatory working groups to further explore how such approaches can be adapted or redefined in and from Balkan contexts. Participants will be able to connect with fellow academics regarding ongoing or future research projects and submit work emerging from the intensive to upcoming publications, including an edited volume.