Calls & Grants

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The rapid diffusion of generative and agentic AI across diverse meaning-making practices has sharpened long-standing questions for educators, artists, and scholars. Issues that have always haunted creative practice - agency (Watkins & Barak-Medina, 2024), authorship (Craig & Kerr, 2021; Formosa et al., 2025), copyright and acknowledgment (Frye, 2020), and identity (Horst, 2025; Gunkel & Wales, 2021) - take on new significance as generative systems now produce outputs indistinguishable from what we still call “human-authored” work (Elkhatat et al., 2023). In this postdigital landscape, data, labour, bodies, and machinic processes entangle (Horst, 2025), unsettling how we think about the relationships among creativity, meaning, and responsibility in educational spaces. Given these challenges, how should arts-based and aesthetic modes of inquiry and invention adapt to, resist, or otherwise encompass sociotechnical systems that mirror - however darkly - what has long been treated as a uniquely human capacity for creative expression (Bassett, 2024)? In light of AI’s extractive infrastructures and cultural–political entanglements (Crawford, 2021; Pasquinelli & Joler, 2023), what do these systems suggest about the colonising tendencies of contemporary education more broadly? What imaginaries can we fabulate in order to understand ourselves within and against these systems (Jasanoff & Kim, 2015; Horst, 2024)? Should we be building them at all (Rahm, 2024) - and if so, under what conditions (Birhane, 2021; Mohamed, Png, & Isaac, 2020)? This special issue foregrounds speculative (e.g., Dunne & Raby, 2013) and arts-based (e.g., Leavy, 2020) approaches to understanding the algorithmically saturated transformations underway in education and educational research - attending to AI as object, subject, medium, and muse (Dishon, 2024; Nichols, 2024). It takes up computation, predictive algorithms, and datafied landscapes through posthuman and postdigital lenses (Braidotti, 2019; Jandrić, 2023), exploring how speculative and arts-based inquiry can open new ways of engaging with our algorithmic entanglements in contemporary education, foregrounding how data, code, and human practice are co-emergent. Generative AI does not stay still under our inquiring gaze; rather, these systems recursively entangle with the ways in which we represent and understand the world (Hayles, 2017). Speculative, arts-based, and posthumanist methods (Harris & Rousell, 2022; Horst, 2023) offer practices for engaging AI not only as a tool but as a cultural, aesthetic, and ethically fraught phenomenon marked by tension, contradiction, and negotiation. This special issue invites contributions that situate AI in education through creative and arts-based inquiry, speculative design, relational and postdigital research, and artistic inquiry - while centring protocols of reciprocity and sovereignty where appropriate (Birhane, 2021). Our aim is to show how these approaches can open new pathways for critical understanding and transformative pedagogy across classrooms, studios, laboratories, and public spaces.

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This volume explores the largely untapped field of Rural Media Studies, focusing on the impact of digitalization beyond metropolitan centers. We aim to compile the final manuscript by *December 15, 2025*. Scope and Objectives The volume will examine the processes of digitalization and their unique influences in rural contexts, addressing the need for scholarship that moves beyond urban-focused research. Digitalization—the integration of digital technology across sectors of government, business, and society—is often examined through an urban lens, leaving the media landscapes of rural areas underexplored. This volume seeks to address this gap by establishing a *"rural turn"* within Media Studies. This shift is essential to avoid knowledge gaps and enhance decision-making across social, political, and environmental domains. Recognizing that transitioning to climate-neutral societies requires a robust understanding of media practices within rural populations, this volume encourages scholarship that moves beyond traditional urban-centric frameworks.

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The journal Sozialer Fortschritt is dedicating a special issue to the topic of ‘Digitalisation in social policy – processes, effects and perspectives’ (guest editors: Prof. Dr Felix Wilke, Wesley Preßler, Ernst Abbe University of Applied Sciences Jena). We are looking for theoretically and empirically sound contributions that deal with digital transformation processes in various fields of social policy. The focus is on, among other things: - Digitalisation processes in health, care, old-age provision and social services - Effects on institutions, actors and addressees - Theoretical approaches to explaining digital transformations - Consequences for participation, fundamental rights and social inequality - Datafication, algorithmic systems and governance Submission: Abstracts (max. 400 words in German) by 31 December 2025 to felix.wilke@eah-jena.de.

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Childism, decoloniality, and interculturality each serve as transformative lenses, offering critical insights into systemic inequalities and enabling the rethinking of power, agency, and relationality. Childism – akin to feminism, but from the position of children and childhood – offers underexplored theoretical possibilities for decoloniality and interculturality by examining age as a dimension of oppression and oppressive structures. The myth of an ‘ideal and universal childhood’ that progresses through neat developmental stages as well as the ‘figure of the child’ as an inferior state of being human are significant enablers of continued marginalisation of not only individuals below the age of 18 years defined as children as per international law, but also populations described Eurocentrically as child-like e.g., formerly colonised and indigenous peoples. While theoretical developments in adult-centric oppressive logics are significant for expanding the scope of decolonial and intercultural studies, these synergies have not yet received sufficient scholarly attention. The special issue aims to explore how these critical frameworks intersect to challenge entrenched paradigms, reimagine inclusive practices, and inspire new possibilities in educational research, practise, and policy. We invite contributions that explore connections between childism, decoloniality, and interculturality. Together, these lenses hold the potential to disrupt Eurocentric adultist norms underlying colonial legacies and assumptions that continue to shape societal structures.

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The special issue aims to bring together innovative, thought-provoking contributions, from different fields, national and regional contexts, exploring a range of topics, including: • Gender and visual political communication • African political communication and visuals • Disinformation, misinformation, and visual political communication • The use/abuse of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Visual Political Communication in Africa’s Digital Sphere. • Audience research on visual political communication, and digital spaces • Methodological considerations in researching visuals • Theoretical and conceptual concepts of studying Visual Political Communication in Africa/ African Visual Political Communication • Decoloniality and Visual Political Communication in Africa’s Digital Sphere. • Ethical issues in Visual Political Communication in Africa’s • Citizenship, activism, social movements, and visual political communication • Satire/humour, and the use of visuals in political communication • Political campaigns, electoral campaigns and the use of Visual Political Communication

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Sección 7 – Perspectivas decoloniales en la enseñanza de dinámicas culturales hispanoamericanas: cruzando umbrales hacia la pluralidad y la post-digitalidad. Formatos para las presentaciones (una propuesta por persona): 1: Ponencia interactiva de unos 45min (30min con 10min de discusión) 2: Taller práctico (90min) Lengua: español o alemán Es crucial que en las escuelas como lugares de socialización y formación, la enseñanza crítica y decolonial sea parte del currículo. No solo en los materiales que se utilizan sino también en la práctica docente. Es notable que haya estudiantes que llegan a su formación universitaria sin haber reflexionado sobre continuidades poscoloniales. Este hecho puede ser un indicador de la ausencia en la sociedad en general de perspectivas críticas sobre estas continuidades, o de un inadecuado tratamiento de éstas en el sistema escolar en particular. El presente panel propone crear un espacio de reflexión sobre cómo incorporar e implementar perspectivas críticas de lo poscolonial en la enseñanza de dinámicas culturales en Hispanoamérica y España, en consideración de todos los ámbitos involucrados en este proceso. Esto es considerar, junto a la enseñanza del idioma español, las transformaciones sociales de los contextos de sus hablantes y cómo éstas son abordadas y/o representadas por miembros de las respectivas comunidades. También significa considerar el contexto de aprendizaje, vale decir la escuela o centros de formación adulta, puesto que las condiciones de la poscolonialidad generan realidades también en el interior de las instituciones educacionales y se manifiestan, entre otras cosas, en los programas de enseñanza. Esta propuesta se enmarca entonces en la necesidad de cruzar umbrales epistemológicos y metodológicos para fomentar una comprensión crítica, diversa y plural que cuestione los imaginarios dominantes (Castoriadis, 2005) y dé voz a narrativas subalternas, propiciando así polifonías decoloniales. Considerando las experiencias de personas que trabajan en los distintos contextos de enseñanza, el panel busca discutir sobre perspectivas y herramientas de implementación para el fomento de una educación crítica y representativa de la pluralidad de los contextos en los que se habla la lengua. De esta manera se busca también contribuir a la necesaria transformación de currículos e inclusión de nuevas metodologías y prácticas. Se propone un abordaje interdisciplinario, que combine los aportes de la teoría poscolonial (Coronil, 2000 / Hall 2013) e interseccional (Lugones, 2008 / Mignolo, 2005 / Spivak, 2017), con un enfoque que reconoce la “mediatización profunda” (Hepp, 2020) y la continuidad entre los mundos “en línea” y “fuera de línea”, es decir, post-digitales (Knox, 2019). En este contexto es que las nuevas tecnologías y los medios pueden servir para explorar nuevas formas de enseñanza con materiales innovadores para los estudios del español, las dinámicas culturales de sus hablantes y la representación y mediatización de éstas. La interdisciplinariedad puede manifestarse también en los acercamientos metodológicos. Se invita a reflexionar sobre cómo las herramientas digitales y las plataformas de redes sociales pueden ser utilizadas para crear espacios de diálogo intercultural (López García, 2024) y de construcción colectiva de conocimiento. Se destaca la utilización del cine y otros medios audiovisuales (Troncoso Salazar, 2021) como vehículos para explorar imaginarios sobre el sur global, la diversidad de voces subalternas y su mediatización. El análisis crítico de producciones cinematográficas y series televisivas pueden reflejar realidades sociales y procesos culturales, entregando imágenes de mayor resolución, vale decir, más complejas, de las comunidades de la lengua estudiada. El panel busca entonces explorar experiencias pedagógicas que reflexionen sobre los siguientes posibles tópicos, sin limitarse a ellos: 1) Metodologías en la enseñanza del español y de estudios culturales sobre Hispanoamérica y España que incorporen una perspectiva crítica poscolonial. 2) Utilización de medios audiovisuales y digitales para explorar imaginarios emergentes subalternos. 3) Análisis crítico de sitios de redes sociales y plataformas digitales como espacios de producción cultural. 4) Desafíos y oportunidades de la post-digitalidad en la enseñanza de lenguas y culturas.