Technology and digitization profoundly shape the world we live in, and the stakes are high. This call invites papers that explore the complex interplay of technology and humankind, understanding the fundamental changes, examining the new opportunities enabled by technological advances as well as the tremendous risks inherent to digitization, and envisaging the prospects for a better life in the digitized era. Issues addressed by the conference program will revolve around digitalization and its entanglement with contemporary social, political, economic, and cultural developments – from algorithmic governance and regulation through the role of AI in popular culture to the ever-increasing permeation of our lives with digital devices. 

The recent rise of AI has triggered a heightened awareness of the far-reaching impact of digitization on our lives, which ranges from numerous beneficial uses to worrisome concerns for open democratic societies and the lives of their citizens. Technological change is expanding the boundaries of what is possible. There are strong reasons to be concerned about the enormous concentration of power, resources, and prioritization of future AI R&D directions in the hands of very few players. 

We define Digital Humanism as an approach that describes, analyzes, and, most importantly, influences the complex interplay of technology and humankind, for a better society and life, fully respecting universal human rights.

Addressing these challenges requires interdisciplinary collaboration between a whole range of domains from computer science to humanities. We invite contributions that explore all scientific aspects at the complex interplay of humans and machines in the digitized age. Different research methodologies and approaches are welcome.

List of Topics

The following topics based on the Vienna Manifesto on Digital Humanism offer an illustrative, though certainly not exhaustive list of possible fields to be addressed:

• Philosophical reflections on digitalization
• Governance, regulation, control, and security of AI
• Digital technologies and their impact on democracy and inclusion
• Privacy and freedom of speech in the digital arena
• Rules and laws, effective regulations for technological development
• Accountability, fairness, and transparency of software and algorithms
• The role of tech monopolies, market competitiveness and anti-trust
• Internet governance and digital sovereignty
• Automated and human decision making
• Participatory approaches and collective decision-making, computational social choice
• New systems design
• Cross-disciplinary approaches to technological questions, especially collaborations between computer science / informatics and social sciences and the humanities
• New educational curricula, combining knowledge from the humanities, the social sciences, and engineering studies
• Researchers and practitioners and their shared responsibility for the impact of information technologies
• Human-centered AI, human-AI interaction, and human-AI teaming
• Ethical models/frameworks around AI and data, handling of bias
• Environmental costs and climate impacts of digitization/AI

Submission Guidelines

DIGHUM 2025 welcomes submissions of long papers (15 pages) or short papers (6 pages) of all types, including:

• Empirical, conceptual, or theoretical   
• Technical or system descriptions
• Position papers

The indicated number of pages includes title page, figures, tables, references and appendix.

All submissions will be peer-reviewed (double-blind) and accepted papers will appear in the conference proceedings published in the Springer's Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series. At least one author of each accepted paper is expected to register for the conference and present the work in person.

Evaluation criteria include scientific rigor, impact, and accessibility for an interdisciplinary audience

Submissions must be written in English, present original research, and be formatted according to Springer's guidelines and technical instructions available at:    https://www.springer.com/gp/computer-science/lncs/conference-proceedings-guidelines.

DIGHUM 2025 will not accept any paper which, at the time of submission, is under review or has already been published or accepted for publication in a journal or another conference. These restrictions do not apply to previous workshops with a limited audience and without archival proceedings. Papers that include text generated from large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT are prohibited unless the produced text is presented as a part of the paper’s experimental analysis. Note that this policy does not prohibit authors from using LLMs for editing or polishing author-written text. 

Committees

Program Chairs

• Ludger Hagedorn (Institute for Humans Sciences, Vienna)
• Ute Schmid (University of Bamberg)
• Susan J. Winter (University of Maryland)
• Stefan Woltran (Vienna University of Technology)

Preliminary PC:

• Hans Akkermans, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands
• Ricardo Baeza-Yates, Institute for Experiential AI, Northeastern University, USA
• Noshir Contractor, Northwestern University, USA
• Carlo Ghezzi, Politecnico di Milano, Italy
• Lynda Hardman, CWI Amsterdam, The Netherlands
• Manfred Hauswirth, Fraunhofer FOKUS, Germany
• Marlien Herselman, CSIR, South Africa
• Sabine Köszegi, TU Wien, Austria
• Jeff Kramer, Imperial College London, UK
• James Larus, EPFL, Switzerland
• Edward A. Lee, UC Berkeley, USA
• Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann, University of Geneva, Switzerland / Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
• George Metakides, President of Digital Enlightenment Forum, Visiting Professor, University of Southampton
• Enrico Nardelli, Universita’ di Roma “Tor Vergata”, Italy and Past President of Informatics Europe
• Julia Neidhardt, TU Wien, Austria
• Wolfgang Nejdl, Leibniz Universität Hannover & Forschungszentrum L3S, Germany
• Clara Neppel, IEEE
• Julian Nida-Rümelin, Ludwig-Maximilian University Munich, Germany
• Helga Nowotny, Former President of the ERC, Austria
• Bashar Nuseibeh, Lero, IRL & The Open University, UK
• Erich Prem, eutema, Austria
• Francesco Ricci, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy
• Marc Rotenberg, Center for AI and Digital Policy, USA
• Viola Schiaffonati, Politecnico di Milano, Italy
• Joseph Sifakis, Université Grenoble Alpes, France
• Allison Stanger, Middlebury College, USA
• Klaus Staudacher, bidt, Germany
• Paul Timmers, Oxford University, UK | European University, Cyprus
• Moshe Y. Vardi, Rice University, USA
• Christiane Wendehorst, Universität Wien, Austria
• Hannes Werthner, TU Wien, Austria

Organizing committee

• Juliane Auerböck
• Marie-Louise Lackner
• Kaan Unalan

Publication

DIGHUM-RES25 proceedings will be published in Springer's Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series.

Contact

Please contact dighumres25(AT)easychair(DOT)org with any queries.