[csaa-forum] CFPs - Disability at ICA’25 Denver 12-16 June 2025

[vic z]

We are a group of disability studies scholars who have been active at the International Communication Association (ICA). We are hoping to organize various panels around disability, communication, and media for the ICA 2025 conference, which will be held at Denver 12-16 June 2025. The main theme of the 2025 conference is Disrupting and Consolidating Communication Research. For more information on the conference and the theme, see, https://www.icahdq.org/mpage/ica25-theme

More broadly, we hope to galvanize interest in disability, communication, and media at ICA. We are planning to submit various panels to divisions/interest groups at ICA and have tentatively invited disability scholars to chair them. This is part of a larger move to organize and center disability at ICA.

We welcome submissions from postgraduates, early-career, emerging, and established scholars, activists or practitioners that:

Take on a critical disability studies lens, one which centers disability as generative form of knowledge and/or identity.
Submissions should consider both the specific ICA division/interest group’s call and the main conference theme of disruption.
See below for more details on the various ICA divisions/IG targeted (and requirements)

Do consider sending in a submission for consideration by 11 October 2024 (Anywhere on Earth) to icadisability at gmail.com <mailto:icadisability at gmail.com>  

Please also note the following: 

Your submission should indicate the specific CFP that you are interested in.
We need to balance diversity in the panels (as defined by ICA), so please do indicate any relevant information in your author bios. 
We envision these panels to be hybrid and accessible, so remote participants who cannot make it onsite can also participate. Please also let us know your preferred mode of participation in your submission. 
We will endeavor to get back to you regarding participation as soon as possible after the deadline. 
We are also happy to discuss ideas so feel free to reach out. 
Any questions should be directed to icadisability at gmail.com <mailto:icadisability at gmail.com>  

 

CFP 1: Disability and Activism, Communication, and Social Justice

Proposed Panel Chair: Abdul Rohman (RMIT Vietnam)


In this panel, we are keen to consider how disability and its activisms (especially digital forms across various media) offer means to disrupt communication and advance social/disability justice.

If interested, pls submit a

Title and 150-word abstract for your paper
100-word bio for each author
https://www.icahdq.org/mpage/ACSJ_CFP
 

CFP 2: Disability and Children, Adolescents, and the Media

Proposed Panel Chair: Meryl Alper (Northeastern University)

In this panel, we are keen to explore all media and technologies aimed at and/or used by young people (generally birth through late teens), as well as the contextual issues surrounding this selection and use, especially as it pertains to disability and disruption.

Title and 150-word abstract for your paper
100-word bio for each author
https://www.icahdq.org/mpage/CAM_CFP
 

CFP 3: Disability and Health Communication

Proposed Panel Chair: Katie Ellis (Curtin University)

In this panel we are keen to explore questions of disability across various aspects of health communications, especially in questions of disrupting questions of health communications across society.

Title and 150-word abstract
100-word bio for each author
https://www.icahdq.org/mpage/HEALTH_CFP
 

CFP 4: Disability, Communication and Technology

Proposed Panel Chair: Kuansong Victor ZHUANG (Nanyang Technological University)

In this panel we are keen to explore how new and emergent infocomms technologies, especially its adoption, use, applications, and effects, disrupt existing ways of knowing and understanding disability.

Note that submissions to CAT should focus on an understanding of ICTs, with a focus on the technology itself within the context of human communication

Title and a 75-word abstract 
100-word bio for each author
https://www.icahdq.org/mpage/CAT_CFP
 

CFP 5: Disability and Philosophy, Theory and Critique

Proposed Panel Chair: Remi M. Yergeau (U of Michigan)

In this panel, we are keen to consider how crip theory can offer a lens to think critically about communication and media.

Title and 350-word (max) abstract
100-word bio for each author
https://www.icahdq.org/mpage/PTC_CFP
 

CFP 6: Disability and Popular Media and Culture

Proposed Panel Chair: Beth Haller (Towson U)

In this panel we are keen to consider disability and disruption within the domain of popular media culture.

Title and 150-word abstract
100-word bio for each author
https://www.icahdq.org/mpage/PMC_CFP
 

CFP 7: Disability and Media Industries

Proposed Panel Chair: Elizabeth Ellcessor (U of Virginia)

In this panel, we are keen to explore questions of disability (and also disruptions) especially as it pertains to the critical study of the history, organization, structure, economics, management, and socio-cultural impact of media industries, engaging with research related to multimodal industrial aspects of media – including, but not limited to: film, television, digital media, social media, radio, music, podcasts, publishing, news, media infrastructures, electronic games, livestreaming, and mobile audio-visualities. 
Title and 150-word abstract 
100-word bio for each author
https://www.icahdq.org/mpage/MIS_CFP
 

ICA 2025 Theme: Disruption

Addressing ICA’s 75th anniversary, the 2025 conference theme is an invitation to critically reflect on communication studies as a discipline and ICA as an agent and site of disciplinary development. Theme sessions will take stock of our past, critically review present developments, and chart out future avenues for communication research. We particularly welcome contributions speaking to three important aspects of the theme: communication scholarship as a transformative and stabilizing force in society, as a research practice that can be both revolutionary and consolidating, and communication studies as a disrupted and resilient discipline. In all these contexts, elements of disruption and consolidation are not necessarily antithetical but may productively be framed as a dialectical relationship.

ICA has made significant strides in amplifying the visibility of communication scholarship beyond academia. From democratic backsliding to climate change and conflict transformation, our discipline is poised to provide relevant answers to many burning questions of our time. Through public scholarship, communication scholars can make themselves useful by addressing the problems of the world’s current polycrisis. They may act as a transformative voice in society (by advocating social change) and as a stabilizing force (by maintaining democracy or social justice). A key issue in this context is the sometimes troubled relationship between scholarship and advocacy.

The public impact of scholarship is typically connected to a discipline’s ability to generate original knowledge. During the past 75 years, communication research has exponentially grown in terms of quantity. However, across a variety of disciplines and academic fields, such expansion is mostly attributed to the growth in studies that consolidate existing knowledge, pushing aside disruptive and revolutionary scholarship that forges new directions and breaks existing paradigms. The progressive fragmentation of the discipline may have contributed to this trend, along with persisting social and global inequalities in academia as well as a publication and review culture that ntends to disadvantage certain types of research and scholarly communities, including those from the Global South.

Communication research is facing these issues while itself being disrupted on multiple fronts and, perhaps, with unprecedented consequences. AI-based technologies have started revolutionizing scholarly practice with vast implications for the way we conduct and evaluate scholarship. In addition to high levels of insecurity and precarity, researchers face growing demands to publish in prestigious venues, obtain large grants, and participate in reviewing and evaluations, all putting heavy mental strain on scholars. Through this call, we encourage the discipline to think about possible ways to consolidate our research environment by growing resilience and developing effective coping strategies.

 
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