[EASST-Eurograd] DigID Call for Papers/Workshop 2026
Oisin Miguel O'Brien via Eurograd
Dear All,
The ERC-funded collaborative research project “Doing Digital Identities” (DigID) is pleased to invite submissions for a two-day on-site workshop titled ‘Rethinking the Reconfiguration of State, Citizenship, and Infrastructure in Digital Statecraft’.
The workshop will be hosted from May 28-29, 2026, at Leuphana University Lüneburg in Northern Germany. This workshop will serve as a platform for developing selected papers towards a thematic special issue. The main focus of the workshop is to explore how official identities are done and reconfigured with digital identification devices such as chip-equipped eID-cards, centralized biometric databases or digital identity wallets. We also look for contributions that study how the move from paper-based to digital means of identification reconfigures the relationship between state authorities and citizens across diverse political, social, and technical contexts. The deadline to submit abstracts is 15/01/2026. For enquiries about submissions, please email digital-i...@leuphana.de
We will be able to provide accommodation and pay for travel costs for invited participants (see more details below).
We encourage interdisciplinary work and welcome contributions from a wide range of disciplines and fields of study, in particular work at the intersections of citizenship studies, science and technology studies (STS), critical data studies, and related fields.
Please circulate this call within your networks and among colleagues you think might be interested!
Should you have any questions please do not hesitate to get in touch.
Kind regards,
Oisín (on behalf of the DigID-team)
Call for Papers:
Doing Digital Identities: Rethinking the Reconfiguration of State, Citizenship, and Infrastructure in Digital Statecraft
Organised by the ERC project “Doing Digital Identities” (DigID)
Date: 28-29 May 2026 | Location: Leuphana University Lüneburg, Germany
1. Workshop Theme and Objectives
Digital identification systems, such as biometric databases linked to eID cards or digital identity wallets, that promise seamless remote access to government services, are transforming the way governments recognise, interact with, and manage their citizens and residents. Global policy initiatives such as the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goal 16.9, promoting ‘legal identity for all by 2030’ or the Digital Public Infrastructures initiative, encourage the digitisation of national registration and identification in both the global North and South. Aligning with these frameworks and domestic agendas, national governments adopt digital ID technologies to fulfil their promised roles as catalysts of inclusion and economic development. Thus, we see the proliferation of diverse digital identification systems being integrated into the operation of state authorities to expand inclusion, improve service delivery, and incite economic development. However, digital identification technology can also potentially allow authorities to engage in exclusionary or oppressive practices of government, including the mass surveillance of citizens and targeted repression of members of the political opposition or migrant and minority populations. This workshop invites papers that explore how official identities are done and reconfigured with
digital identification devices and how digital identification reconfigures the relationship between state authorities and citizens across diverse political, social, and technical contexts.
We look particularly for papers that engage with one of the following questions:
* How do digital identification systems reshape the everyday practices, experiences, and meanings of citizenship?
* How do digital identification systems transform relations of power and trust between governments, citizens, and transnational actors?
* How are global agendas attached to digital identity translated, negotiated, resisted, or navigated within specific transnational, national, and local contexts?
* How do digital identification systems become terrains of political struggles over inclusion, exclusion, and rights distribution?
* How do citizens and state actors navigate the expanding role of digital infrastructures in the governing of political and everyday life?
* How does the shift towards digital identification technologies affect the composition, operational logics, and working practices of state institutions?
* How do public-private partnerships, donor agencies, and vendors shape the design, implementation, and everyday use of digital identification systems?
* How do break-downs, failures, ruinations, and repairs
reveal the material and political fragility of digital identification infrastructures and to what political effect?
* How do (in)formal practices and networks affect, sustain, or even repurpose and subvert digital identification systems in everyday life?
The workshop will serve as a platform for developing selected papers towards a special issue.
Participants will have the opportunity to receive in-depth feedback from peers and to engage in collaborative discussions.
2. Thematic Scope
We welcome empirically grounded and theoretically informed contributions from anthropology, sociology, political science, science and technology studies (STS), critical data studies, and related fi elds. Possible themes include, but are not limited to:
* Digital ID systems and reconfigurations of citizenship as a formal relation to the state, national belonging, and a democratic practice;
* Interinstitutional struggles between local, national, and international actors about the design, development, and implementation of digital ID programs;
* Politics of data and identification infrastructures;
* Questions of data justice, ethics, and solidarity in digital identification;
* Everyday negotiations, informality, and brokerage of digital ID in bureaucratic encounters;
* Postcolonial legacies, imaginaries, and trajectories of digital identification systems;
* Ruins, maintenance, and repairs of digital identification infrastructures;
* Interoperability, standards, and transnational system architectures of digital ID technologies;
3. Submission Guidelines
Please send your abstract including information on the research puzzle/question, empirical material, theoretical resources, the argument, and the contribution this paper will make.
Submissions should be made via
on
15/01/2026
at the latest. Kindly ensure to align with the guidelines below:
- Abstract length: up to 250 words
- Include: title, author(s), institutional affiliation, and contact email
- Language: English
Please note that the workshop will be on-site only and thus requires travel to Lüneburg in Northern Germany. Selected participants will receive
confirmation by 15 February 2026
. Accommodation will be paid for all participants. We support travelling costs to Lüneburg with the following caps: up to €150 within Germany, €300 within Europe, and €1000 for travel from outside Europe. We will also cover any additional costs associated with attaining a Schengen visa. Scholars based in Global South institutions may contact us upon acceptance if extra funding is needed.
All invited participants are requested to submit a
paper draft
of 4000–6000 words by 15 May 2026.
4. Contact
For enquiries about submissions, please email