Category: Call for Papers

CFP: Special Issues on GenAI Tools within Libraries, Archives and Museums – Information Technology and Libraries #ITAL

Guest editors Ellen Schmid and Katy Miller invite you to submit a proposal for an article in an upcoming special issue of Information Technology and Libraries that will explore the integration of Generative AI tools within library, archive, and museum research environments. This special issue will be published in September 2026. We welcome contributions that provide practical insights, case studies, or user research on the development, deployment, and impact of AI-enhanced research tools. Topics of interest include user-focused interfaces, implementation processes, UX assessments, and the influence of GenAI on workflows, data analysis, and research practices. Articles should present first-hand experience with designing, testing, or evaluating AI helpers, and may cover commercial or open-source solutions. 

Submissions of up to 5,000 words will be accepted for a publication target of September 2026. 

Article proposals are due February 1, 2026 and include a 500-word abstract and a brief statement about the author’s experience in the field. Authors will be notified of acceptance in late February, with a submission of the first draft of the article (no more than 5,000 words) due May 1, 2026. Articles will go through the same rigorous peer review, copyediting, and proofreading process as any other ITAL article.

This issue will be guest edited by Ellen Schmid and Katy Miller in collaboration with ITAL’s Editor (Ken Varnum) and Assistant Editor (Joanna DiPasquale). 

Submit your proposal: https://forms.gle/aSjdjpvoR2QG4By87

Email questions to: 

CfA: History – Theory – Criticism Journal 2/2026: The AI Turn in Contemporary Historiography: Challenges, Applications, Reflections

Call for Articles

Special Issue 2/2026

The AI Turn in Contemporary Historiography: Challenges, Applications, Reflections

Deadline for submissions: 30 June 2026

Scope and Aims

Artificial intelligence has entered the field of historiography not as a neutral instrument but as a phenomenon that unsettles its very foundations. The capacity of large language models to generate and reorganize knowledge on a scale that surpasses human comprehension compels historians to reconsider the principles that have long defined their craft: authorship, interpretation, verification, and the human mediation of evidence. The accelerating automation of textual production introduces a cognitive threshold that challenges the historian’s ability to control, evaluate, and verify the narratives emerging from algorithmic systems. 

This transformation reveals both the potential and the vulnerability of historical knowledge. Artificial intelligence enables new ways of analyzing extensive textual corpora, translating and connecting sources, and recognizing patterns across linguistic and temporal boundaries. At the same time, it alters the conditions under which meaning is produced and received, eroding the distinction between human interpretation and computational synthesis. The opacity of large models, concealed in their training data and hierarchies of value, complicates one of the historian’s central tasks: the capacity to identify, understand, and critique bias within sources. 

The AI turn in historiography, therefore, marks more than a technical or methodological innovation. It signifies a shift in the scale and ecology of knowledge, shaped by the asymmetries of global computational power and by growing dependence on corporate infrastructures. This situation calls for reflection on how historical inquiry can preserve its ethical and interpretive integrity while adapting to an environment governed by automation, data abundance, and limited transparency.

This special issue of History – Theory – Criticism invites contributions that address these challenges. We seek studies and reflections that examine how artificial intelligence transforms the epistemology, methodology, and ethics of historical work, how historians can critically engage with opaque algorithmic systems, and how humanistic scholarship re-articulates alternative, locally grounded, and sustainable approaches to technological innovation. 

Themes and questions

1. Epistemology, authorship, and interpretation 

a) How does the massive production of synthetic text alter the relationship between information and interpretation? Can historians still claim control over the evidentiary process when relying on systems whose reasoning and corpus remain opaque? 

b) To what extent can AI be said to “understand” the past, and how does its pattern-based synthesis differ from human interpretation? 

c) What frameworks of transparency, citation, and disclosure are needed to ensure accountability in AI-assisted research and writing? 

d) How might the concept of authorship evolve when historical texts are increasingly co-produced by human and machine intelligence? 

2. Methodology, infrastructure, and the Black box 

a) General-purpose models reproduce values, hierarchies, and linguistic biases embedded in their training data, often without the user’s awareness. This deepens the “black box” problem and undermines one of the foundations of historical scholarship—the capacity to identify and critique bias in sources. 

b) How can historians engage critically with these systems without surrendering epistemic agency? 

c) What role might smaller, domain-specific, and ethically curated models play in building more transparent and interpretable infrastructures for historical research? 

d) How can collaboration between historians, computer scientists, and archivists foster local, open, and sustainable alternatives to corporate AI ecosystems? 

3. Cognitive, political, and environmental boundaries 

a) The automation of interpretation introduces a cognitive threshold: the scale of machine-generated material now exceeds what human scholars can meaningfully read or evaluate. This raises the question of how knowledge is curated, filtered, and trusted in a post-verificatory environment. 

b) At the same time, the concentration of computational resources in a few global centers reinforces inequalities between academic communities and widens the gap between those who design AI and those who merely consume it.

c) Finally, the environmental and energy costs of large-scale AI infrastructures compel the humanities to consider the ecological ethics of technological progress. What forms of scholarship might align critical inquiry with sustainability and local autonomy? 

4. Education, practice, and the future of humanistic knowledge 

a) How can historical education cultivate critical AI literacy rather than simple tool proficiency? 

b) What pedagogical strategies can help students and researchers maintain interpretive depth and ethical reflection in an environment saturated by generative systems?

c) Should AI be understood as an auxiliary method, a paradigm shift, or a mirror revealing the epistemological foundations of humanistic knowledge itself? 

d) How can universities and professional organizations shape guidelines that safeguard integrity and creativity while embracing innovation? 

Submission guidelines

Submissions and inquiries should be sent to the Editor-in-Chief via email. 

Language: English 

Text length: articles 36–72,000 characters including notes; discussion papers 18–36,000 characters; reviews 9–18,000 characters. All articles should include an abstract (150–200 words) and 4–5 keywords. 

Format: Microsoft Word (*.docx) or Libre Office (*.odt), following the DTK Manual of Style and Ethical Code 

Peer review: Double-blind by two independent reviewers 

Deadline: 30 June 2026 

Publication: Winter 2026, Diamond Open Access 

Guest Editors: Jaromír Mrňka, Jiří Hlaváček

About the journal

Dějiny – teorie – kritika (History – theory – criticism) is a peer-reviewed, Diamond open-access journal, founded in 2004 and published by the Faculty of Humanities at Charles University. Indexed in SCOPUS, ERIH PLUS, EBSCOhost, CEEOL, and DOAJ, the journal provides a platform for theoretically grounded and methodologically innovative approaches to the past. 

Contact Information

Petr Wohlmuth, Ph.D. (Editor-in-Chief): Petr.Wohlmuth@fhs.cuni.cz

Journal website: https://ojs.cuni.cz/dejinyteoriekritika

Contact Email

Petr.Wohlmuth@fhs.cuni.cz

URL

https://ojs.cuni.cz/dejinyteoriekritika

CFP: Translating Ruins: Mutable Grounds, Mediated Encounters, and Mobile Precarities

We are delighted to invite scholars from all disciplines to contribute to the forthcoming edited volume with Routledge: Translating Ruins: Mutable Grounds, Mediated Encounters, and Mobile Precarities. 

In an era of climate crisis, extractivism, war, forced displacement, migration, and rapid urban change, ruins have become pervasive. Contemporary ruin scholarship has moved beyond the aesthetic of Ruinenlust (‘ruin lust’) to recognise ruins as critical thresholds that illuminate entanglements of pasts, presents, and futures (López Galviz et al., 2017). This edited volume examines how translational practices – broadly conceived as complex semiotic practices that are materially grounded and embedded in sociohistorical, ethical and creative relations – engage with historical and contemporary ruins, and how such practices shape the reconstruction, reinterpretation, remembrance and governance of contested ruin-sites, wider processes of ruination, and forms of ruin-related heritage.

We invite critical and practice-based contributions that engage with the complexities of translating ruins. We especially welcome proposals from Translation Studies, Critical Heritage Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Memory Studies, Urban Studies, Cultural Geography, Art History and Visual Culture, and related fields.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:  

  • The transformation of ruins into museums, monuments, heritage sites, and immersive multimedia formats. 
  • The redevelopment or repurposing of ruins into green spaces, public facilities, cultural infrastructures, or commercial complexes – spaces that may themselves enter new cycles of decay and renewal.  
  • Multilingual and multimodal interpreting and translation practices within ruin-related museums, heritage sites, communities, or institutional settings.  
  • Activist or community-based translation practices, or artistic interventions in sites of historical or ongoing ruination.  
  • Intermedial and multimodal representations and translations of ruins and ruin narratives across diverse platforms and formats, including social media, blogs, travel vlogs, livestreams, and digital archives.  
  • The translation and resignification of ruin-related textual fragments, archival materials, photographs, and other material remnants. 
  • The translation of narratives that foreground the material presence and historical specificity of ruins, and the lived experience of those who built, inhabited, or survived ruins. 
  • The transposition of ruin objects to new sites and interpretive contexts (e.g., travelling exhibitions, diasporic archives).   

Submission details:

Please submit a proposal of up to 300 words as a single Word document (.doc or .docx) to translatingruins@gmail.com with the subject line: “[Your Name] – Chapter Proposal”. 

The Word document should include: 

  • A provisional chapter title 
  • An abstract (maximum 300 words, excluding references) and up to five keywords 
  • A short biographical note (maximum 150 words), including your affiliation and contact details
  • A brief statement indicating whether the proposed chapter will include any line illustrations, photographs, or tables, and whether colour reproduction will be required

The deadline for abstract submission is 23 February 2026. Full chapters are due 30 September 2026.

Contact Information

Yaqi Xi (yaqi.xi@warwick.ac.uk), University of Warwick, UK.

Shaoyu Yang (shaoyu.yang@warwick.ac.uk), University of Warwick, UK.

Contact Email

translatingruins@gmail.com

Attachments

CfP_Translating Ruins

CFP: “Sound Recordings” – Journal Sources. Materials & Fieldwork in African Studies

We are pleased to announce a call for papers (in French, English, and Portuguese) for a special issue on the theme: “Sound recordings,” coordinated by Charlotte Grabli (CNRS, Centre d’histoire sociale des mondes contemporains) and Aïssatou Mbodj-Pouye (CNRS, Institut des mondes africains), to be published in the journal Sources. Materials & Fieldwork in African Studies

This issue of Sources ambitions to bring together multiple disciplinary perspectives on one or more sound sources produced in Africa. Whether issued from old collections or produced today, audio materials are attracting growing interest in African studies, particularly thanks to the promotion by institutions, researchers, activists and artists of forgotten or difficult-to-access sound and audiovisual collections. Recorded since the late 19th century, these sound objects are extremely diverse: linguistic material, songs and music, field recordings, radio archives, commercial records, film soundtracks, recordings of trials, political speeches, sermons, cassette letters, digital voicemails, etc. Their circulation has increased with the possibilities for duplication offered by cassette technology, and even more so with the digital revolution. Audio recording is also often one of the tools available to social science researchers, and sound objects have become part of the range of objects collected during fieldwork. However, the specificities of the sonic nature of these materials are rarely questioned. Particularly in the case of African and diasporic contexts, it is important to develop methods of listening and analysing that can grasp the multidimensional nature of recordings, the power relations and forms of agency that mark the processes of production, circulation and archiving.

The call is available in English: https://journals.openedition.org/sources/4217

In French: https://journals.openedition.org/sources/4206 

In Portuguese: http://journals.openedition.org/sources/4229 

Proposals should be sent before February 10, 2026 to the following addresses: charlotte.grabli@cnrs.fr, mbodj@cnrs.fr, sources@services.cnrs.fr 

Please feel free to share this call for papers in your newsletters, on your websites, and on social media.

Contact Information

Charlotte Grabli, CNRS, Centre d’histoire sociale des mondes contemporains
charlotte.grabli@cnrs.fr

Aïssatou Mbodj-Pouye, CNRS, Institut des mondes africains
mbodj@cnrs.fr

Contact Email
sources@services.cnrs.fr

URL

https://journals.openedition.org/sources/4217

Call for Chapters: Dangerous Writings

Colleagues are invited to submit chapters for an edited collection of Dangerous Writings.

In October 2025, the Dangerous Writings symposium on the Ethics and Practicalities of Working with Risky Texts brought together scholars, archivists, practitioners, and creatives at the University of Manchester to consider the multiple forms of danger embedded in writing, curating, and reading. “Dangerous writings”, for example, include incendiary political texts or memoirs that reveal classified or confidential information, letters from prison and exile, have long served as catalysts for transformation. Yet they are also laden with numerous ethical, emotional, and sometimes legal implications for those who collect them, handle them, and/or encounter them.

This edited collection seeks to develop the conversations initiated at the symposium. At the heart of this endeavour lies a set of questions about power and responsibility. What does it mean to work with writing that unsettles or resists? How do archives, institutions, and researchers navigate the demands of care and risk? And what forms of knowledge or possibility open when we approach these materials with an ethical sensibility?

Contributors are invited to explore dangerous writings in all their complexity, whether through historical, sociological, literary, archival, or practice-based approaches. We are interested in chapters that illuminate how such texts are produced under conditions of constraint; how they challenge authority or institutional narratives; how they demonstrate forms of solidarity and resistance; and how readers, researchers, and custodians negotiate the emotional and professional labour involved in engaging with them.

Works across the social sciences that reflects these tensions are especially welcome. By thinking across disciplinary and institutional boundaries, we hope to advance understanding of what risky writing does and what responsibilities it generates for those who work with it.

Schedule

  • First full chapter drafts (approx. 8,000 words): September 2026
  • Editorial comments returned: November 2026
  • Revised final drafts due: February 2027
  • Proof-ready manuscript submitted to publisher: April 2027
  • Anticipated publication: Summer 2027

Expressions of Interest

Please signal your interest in contributing by emailing Jon Shute (with Emily Turner and Marion Vannier in cc) by Friday, 16 January 2026. At this stage, a brief provisional title and 250 word abstract will suffice.

Call for Case Studies – Artificial Intelligence Applications in Oral History

The forthcoming publication from Palgrave Macmillan, Artificial Intelligence Applications in Oral History: Reports from the Field, is launching a call for case studies from oral history practitioners across the world who have utilized artificial intelligence technologies in their work. The possible applications of this technology will be divided into the following chapters:

Chapter 1 – Artificial Intelligence as Oral History Interviewer

Chapter 2 – Artificial Intelligence as Oral History Transcriber

Chapter 3 – Artificial Intelligence as Oral History Indexer

Chapter 4 – Artificial Intelligence as Oral History Researcher

Chapter 5 – Artificial Intelligence as Oral History Curator

Those interested in submitting their work for potential case study inclusion will identify one of these five areas and summarize their efforts in an abstract of around 250 words, focusing on the application of said technologies, the outcomes of said application, and any lessons learned, or opinions held, in the aftermath. 

Those selected for inclusion will be notified by mid-January 2026 and will then have six months to produce their case study. These documents will range in size from 2500-5000 words depending on the scope of the work and the total number of case studies accepted. The book itself is currently scheduled to be submitted by the end of the Summer 2026 and published in Q1 2027.

The deadline for abstract submission is December 31, 2025. If you are interested in submitting a project for consideration, or if you have any questions about this opportunity, please contact author/editor Steven Sielaff at Steven_Sielaff@baylor.edu.

Contact Information

Steven Sielaff

Contact Email

Steven_Sielaff@baylor.edu

CFP: Librarians to Write About Digital Tools for IT (Information Today) Magazine

Information Today (IT) magazine (https://www.infotoday.com/it/) is seeking feature article writers for its Insights on Content: Making Sense of the Digital Maze section. If you’re a library worker who engages with digital tools and/or e-resources and you have knowledge you’d like to share, please reach out to editor in chief Brandi Scardilli (bscardilli@infotoday.com) with your topic idea(s). You can propose one article or multiple. Articles will appear in the quarterly issues of 2026, and they should be a maximum of 800 words. IT pays $200 per article.

—

Brandi Scardilli
she/her | Muck Rack
Editor in Chief, Computers in Libraries
Editor in Chief, Information Today
Editor in Chief, ITI NewsBreaks, ITI NewsLink
Contributor, Streaming Media
Ebook Coordinator, ITI/Plexus

Call for Chapters: Routledge Handbook of Oral History Theory

Co-editors George Severs and Amy Tooth Murphy are inviting expressions of interest to contribute chapters to the forthcoming Routledge Oral History Theory Handbook. The Handbook will consist of between 35 and 40 chapters in English which aim to reflect on and advance the field of theory within oral history. Despite its usefulness and importance, theory remains under-examined and under-appreciated within oral history. In dialogue with each other, the chapters of the Handbook will situate and make a case for theory as a crucial and productive component of oral history work, both within and beyond the academy. Across all stages of the oral history process, from conception to analysis and dissemination, theory is vital. To that end, the editors invite a wide range of contributions which centre theoretical frameworks, approaches, developments and provocations.

Theory is a live and dynamic process. As such, contributors to this volume are not expected to make definitive or ‘final’ pronouncements. Rather we encourage submissions which propose new and emerging concepts, actively engage with ongoing theoretical developments, and impact future practice. In doing so, the editors seek to stage work by an international range of authors, including but not limited to early career and established scholars, oral history practitioners, public historians, archivists and activists. This volume will be global in scope and the editors encourage submissions from a wide range of geographic contexts. We particularly encourage submissions from authors working in the geopolitical south and/or whose work foregrounds theories and questions of decolonisation and/or indigeneity.

We are seeking chapters of 8000 words. Authors are encouraged to submit abstracts of 250-300 words to the editors via ohtheoryhandbook@gmail.com along with a short biography by January 31st 2026. Authors are reminded that theory should form the core of the proposed chapters. We appreciate that case studies may feature but these should be used to evidence or inform the theoretical interventions at the hearts of chapters. The editors will respond with their decisions on submitted abstracts by the end of February 2026 and first draft chapters will be expected by the end of December 2026.

To learn more, please see the full Call for Chapters here.

CFP: Propose a Topic for an ITAL column: “From the Field” or “ITAL &”

Information Technology and Libraries (ITAL), the quarterly open-access journal published by ALA’s Core: Leadership, Infrastructure, Futures division, is looking for contributions to two of its regular, non-peer-reviewed columns: ”From the Field” and “ITAL &” for volume 45 (2026). Proposals are due by December 1, 2025, and authors will be notified by December 31, 2025.

The two columns are intended to be practitioner-focused, and editors will happily entertain submissions from folks who have expertise in libraries and technology but who may not work in a traditional “library” environment or role. We are also happy to work with first-time authors and folks based outside of North America, though columns must be submitted in English.

Columns are generally in the 1,000-1,500 word range and may include illustrations. These will not be peer-reviewed research articles but are meant to share practical experience with technology development or uses within the library. The September 2026 issue of ITAL will likely be a special issue about AI, so we will be looking for AI-themed topics to coincide with that publication. Topics for the other three projected ITAL issues in 2026 will include a broader variety of subject areas, as outlined for each column below.

Please note: there is more information about each column below, and there are different submission forms for each column. You are welcome to submit proposals to one or both, but please avoid submitting the exact same proposal to both columns, and please ensure you are using the correct form for your submission.

From the Field:

“From the Field” highlights a technology-based project, practice, or innovation from any library in the GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) community. The focus should be on the use of specific technologies to improve, provide access to, preserve, or evaluate the impact of library resources and services.

Recent “From the Field” columns highlighted innovative technology projects in small and large libraries and archives ranging from using visualization technology to make more effective use of library budgets to using ChatGPT to identify and highlight the work of early modern women printers. Sample future columns could include implementations around management of research data; implementation of new open source products; preservation of digitized or born-digital objects; uses or development of AI tools; support of open science/open education, etc.

Those who are interested in being an author for “From the Field” should submit a brief proposal / abstract that outlines the topic to be covered. Proposals should be no more than 250 words. Please submit your proposals via this form no later than December 1, 2025.

ITAL &:

“ITAL &” is a featured column that focuses on ways in which the library’s role continues to expand and develop in the information technology landscape. The emphasis will be on emerging ideas and issues, with a particular aim to recruit new-to-the-profession columnists.

Recent “ITAL &” columns have discussed accessibility requirements for web-based content, critical thinking about and usage of emerging generative AI tools, a review of a practitioner’s first year as a new systems librarian, issues surrounding knowledge access in the prison industrial complex, and a comparison of free graphic design software platforms commonly used by library workers. Future topics could include, but are not limited to: disability and accessibility, cybersecurity and privacy, the open movement / open pedagogy, linked data and metadata, digital humanities / digital praxis, digitization efforts, programming and workshops, the overlap between library technology and other library departments (acquisitions, readers advisory, information literacy and instruction, scholarly communications), or other emerging technologies and their implications for library work.

Those who are interested in being an author for this column should submit a brief proposal / abstract that outlines the topic to be covered. Proposals should be no more than 250 words. Please submit your proposals via this form no later than December 1, 2025.

____

Since these are both non-peer-reviewed columns, there is also an opportunity to engage in new or different formats, so creative submissions will also be considered. (Examples: comics, zines, videos, autoethnography, case studies, white papers, policy documents, interviews, reports, or other things commonly referred to as “grey literature.”) If you would like your column to be in a format that differs from a standard editorial essay, please explain in your proposal.

Contact Cindi Blyberg at cindi@blyberg.net (From the Field) or Shanna Hollich at shollich@gmail.com (ITAL &) with any questions. Please forward to any colleagues who may be interested. Thank you!

CFP: Society of Mississippi Archivists Annual Meeting

The Society of Mississippi Archivists will hold its annual meeting at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, on March 26-27, 2026.

Theme: Reflecting on American History in the Archives

The Society of Mississippi Archivists invites proposals for presentations and panels that explore the 250th anniversary of the United States by focusing on how archivists, archival collections, and archival practices reflect, interpret, and preserve American culture and history.

We welcome proposals that address topics such as (but not limited to):

  • Interesting stories uncovered while processing collections or working with researchers
  • Collection development
  • Exhibits (physical or digital) highlighting collections
  • Integrating collections into bibliographic instruction
  • Working with donor and collection supporters
  • Digital archives
  • Programming centered on collections
  • Using archives in K-12
  • Preserving archival material
  • Collecting materials on under-documented histories
  • Working with born digital collections

Submission Guidelines

  • Submit an abstract of approximately 250 words describing the topic.
  • Include the names, affiliations, contact information and presentation titles of all presenters.
  • All proposals are welcome. While the theme is “Reflecting on American History in the Archives,” we will consider archival-related proposals beyond the theme.
  • Submissions are open to Society of Mississippi Archivists members and non-members, and we welcome proposals from students at the undergraduate or graduate level.

Deadline: January 12, 2026

Submit to: Jennifer Brannock at Jennifer.Brannock@usm.edu.

Questions: Contact Jennifer Brannock at Jennifer.Brannock@usm.edu.