CFP: Twinning Earth Workshop

[Michael Richardson]

Dear Canada STS colleagues,

If you’ll be in Toronto for 4S in October, you may be interested in the workshop we are convening at U of T just before the conference.

Warmly,

Michael 

CFP: Twinning Earth Workshop, University of Toronto, Oct 6, 2026

Two interconnected media-technological tendencies are reshaping relationships with our home planet. First: projects of digital twinning that aim to create virtual replicas of Earth, such as the European Commission’s Destination Earth, NVIDIA’s Earth-2, and, at a national scale, Imagining Canada’s Digital Twin. Second: cohabitation of other planets from NASA’s Artemis program for Mars to the tech oligarchy’s visions of abandoning Earth and beginning anew elsewhere in the Solar System.

Twinning Earth is a one-day workshop organized at the University of Toronto on October 6. We are inviting contributions, which examine and theorize the stakes of twinning Earth both digitally and in livable habitats on distant planets. What technologies, techniques and cultural contexts are required to make doubles of Earth? What values and priorities animate computational efforts to make Earth livable as the climate crisis intensifies? What techno-futures are envisioned in grand ambitions of transforming hostile outer space environments into Earth-like habitats?

The workshop is organised by Tero Karppi (UofT), Hanna E. Morris (UofT), and Michael Richardson (UNSW Sydney) and supported by the Jackman Humanities Institute’s Program for Arts. The workshop takes place in-person at the University of Toronto in Toronto, Canada, prior to the annual science and technology studies 4S Conference. To maximise the collaborative potential of the workshop, participants will distribute max 2,000 word papers two weeks prior to the event, which they will then speak to in collaborative, discussion-focused panels. Papers can be loose drafts rather than polished works, with the aim of using feedback at the workshop to develop full papers for potential inclusion in a special issue, with an appropriate journal to be determined based on draft contributions.

Please submit your brief paper proposals of no more than 250 words by 14 August 2026 via this Google Form.

If your proposal is accepted, the full 2,000 word paper will be due on 17 September 2026.

Key dates

• Submission deadline: 14 August 2026 (23:59 CEST)

• Notification of acceptance: 24 August 2026

• Submission of 2,000 word paper: 17 September 2026

• Circulation of papers: 22 September 2026

• Symposium: 6 October 2026, Toronto, Canada

-----

Michael Richardson (he/him) 

Professor in Media and Culture

Co-Director, Media Futures Hub

Chief Investigator, ADM+S

School of the Arts & Media | Faculty of Arts, Design & Architecture | University of New South Wales

michael.r...@unsw.edu.au | https://www.unsw.edu.au/staff/michael-richardson

New book: Richardson, Michael. Nonhuman Witnessing: War, Data, and Ecology after the End of the World. Duke University Press, 2024.

I acknowledge and pay respect to the Traditional Owners of the land I work and live on, the Bidjigal and Gadigal Peoples, and their elders past and present. Sovereignty was never ceded, and the struggle for justice continues.

This email and any files transmitted with it may contain confidential information. If you believe you have received this email or any of its contents in error, please notify me immediately by return email and destroy this email. Do not use, disseminate, forward, print or copy any contents of an email received in error.