Deadline for panel paper abstracts: January 15, 2026 (5pm UTC)

Panel Convenor: Nico Carpentier, CULCORC, Charles University, Prague,  Czech Republic. 

Submission to be sent to: nico.carpentier@fsv.cuni.cz 

Dear all, 

I plan to submit a panel proposal for the IAMCR 2026 conference, which  will take place in Galway (Ireland), from 28 June - 2 July 2026. The  theme of this year's conference is "Peripheries and Connections: Media,  Communication and Transformation", with panel and paper submission  deadline of 3 February 2026. More about the conference can be found (as  you know) at https://iamcr.org/galway2026. 

This panel proposal, which originates from my work in MeDeMAP (a  European research project), will be entitled “Participation, Knowledge  and Communication: An Intersection of Transformative Forces”; the  abstract is below. 

With this call for papers (for this panel) I want to invite interested  scholars, activists and artists, from a diversity of locations and  affiliations, to join me in this panel proposal. In order to allow time  for the panel selection process, proposals should reach me, at  nico.carpentier@fsv.cuni.cz, on or before 15 January 2026, 5pm UTC. 

Proposals need to include (1) an abstract between 500 and 800 words, (2)  a title, (3) an author list with names, affiliations and email  addresses, and (4) a note confirming that at least one author will be  present in person at the IAMCR conference (if the panel is accepted). 

The panel “Participation, Knowledge and Communication: An Intersection  of Transformative Forces” incorporates theoretical and empirical  research papers which scrutinise the intersection of three key concepts  and the multitude of practices they cover. First, participation, defined  here as the rebalancing of power imbalances (see, e.g., Pateman, 1970),  or, as the sharing of power, with its promises of empowerment, is  central to our understanding of political processes in a variety of  societal fields (also moving beyond politics). Participation has the  capacity to validate ordinary people and the decentralisation of  decision-making processes. Knowledge, in its very Foucauldian meaning,  is seen the assemblage of the discourses that are constructed as  truthful renderings of social reality. To use McCarthy (1996: 2)  definition: “knowledge refers to any and every set of ideas accepted by  one or another social group or society of people, ideas pertaining to  what they accept as real.” Finally, communication is approached here as  the interpreting and sharing of meaning, through the exchange of  signifying practices, structured through discourses and ideologies. Also  knowledge and communication, are deeply political practices, structured  through power relations, and part of discursive-material construction  processes, always located in particular geographies. 

This panel is particular interested in how these three notions  theoretically and empirically intersect, and how these intersections  allow us to (re)think societal transformations, in a diversity of  centres and peripheries. For instance, this panel aims to open up  discussions about situated knowledge (Haraway, 1988), and its capacity  to feed into participatory processes, but also how participatory  processes can bring out a diversity of voices which otherwise would be  silenced by hegemonic knowledge and communication practices. Similarly,  the panel is interested in collaborative-participatory knowledge  production and communication processes, which disrupt the traditional  centres and hierarchies of knowledge production. Equally important are  alternative-participatory communication practices, which allow for the  generation of new knowledges, or for the re-articulation of existing  hegemonic knowledge frameworks. Through an articulation of different  critical perspectives, this panel aims to deepen our reflections on how  these three notions intersect, and how they can support (or disrupt)  social change processes and societal transformations.