CfP: Digital Geographies of Childhood and Youth

Digital technologies are deeply embedded in the everyday lives of many children and young people, yet geographical scholarship on this topic remains fragmented. Recent years have seen the beginnings of a productive conversation between the geographies of childhood and youth and digital geographies. This symposium seeks to deepen that conversation by exploring emerging themes around the digital geographies of childhood and youth.

We welcome papers that address (but are not limited to) theoretical and thematic aspects evolving around:

• • Critical reflections on diverse and entangled digital technologies in children’s and young people’ worlds including social media, AI, robotics, bio- and neurotechnology,
  • Negotiating human, more-than-human, and posthuman perspectives on children/ young people, technologies, and agency,
  • Creative appropriations, embodiment, and animism in the use of technologies by children and young people,
  • Difference, intersectionality, inequality, and power in digital geographies of childhood and youth,
  • Geographical interventions in public, media, or policy debates about youth and digital media.

Aim of the Symposium

The symposium aims to foster critical debate by bringing scholars together, who work on conceptual and empirical aspects of the digital lives of children and young people. We will aim towards compiling an edited volume (Routledge or Springer) based on the Symposium papers.

Submission

Submit a title for your paper and an abstract (max. 300 words) by March 8, 2026 to Brigitte Heine (brigitte.heine@uni-heidelberg.de).

Organising team

Prof. Dr. Tabea Bork-Hüffer, Heidelberg University

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Christina Ergler, University of Otago

Prof. Dr. Peter Kraftl, Loughborough University

Prof. Dr. Sarah Mills, Loughborough University

We thank the International Academic Forum Heidelberg for providing us with their premises.