Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 40, No. 125.
Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
Hosted by DH-Cologne
www.dhhumanist.org
Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
Date: 2026-08-17 13:31:05+00:00
From: Gabriele Salciute Civiliene <gabriele.salciute-civiliene@kcl.ac.uk>
Subject: CfP MULTISENSORY XR: From ‘Tech for Good’ to Ethical Immersive Experience, King's College London, 6-7 January 2027
Dear all,
I'm very pleased to share the below invite to submit your proposals to the
Multisensory XR conference, which is the outcome of the AHRC Curiosity-awarded
project "MULTISENSORY XR: From ‘Tech for Good’ to Ethical Immersive
Experience"<https://multisensoryxr.sites.er.kcl.ac.uk/> led by the XR &
Attention Research Group<https://www.kcl.ac.uk/research/xr-and-attention>.
=========
Call for Papers
MULTISENSORY XR: From ‘Tech for Good’ to Ethical Immersive Experience
An international interdisciplinary conference
6-7 January 2027
Centre for the Ecologies of Attention and Perception
King’s College London, London, UK
KEYNOTES
* Sarah Ticho<https://hatsumi.co.uk/about>
Multidisciplinary artist and maker operating at the intersection of health,
wellbeing and embodied storytelling, using immersive technologies
* Alan Warburton<https://alanwarburton.co.uk/>
Media theorist working across synthetic imaging techniques, known for his
groundbreaking video essays
* Plenary panel on Open XR: Beyond Platform Economies
***
AI now dominates public and scholarly attention, overshadowing many other areas
of technology. Yet there have been some prominent recent developments around
Extended Reality (XR) – a blurring of actual and virtual worlds encompassing
Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality and Mixed Reality – that deserve equal
scrutiny. Often supported by AI, XR is transforming the way we interact with
digital and physical spaces. Our conference will explore the growing importance
of this technology. Its primary aim is to gather scholars and practitioners
working on and with XR to jointly establish an interdisciplinary research field
of Multisensory XR, with a focus on critical enquiry into its social, cultural
and ethical dimensions. Current XR designs are often driven by industry
ambitions for total immersion, seeking to captivate users so that they ‘never
want to leave’. This approach remains overly focused on commercial needs at the
expense of social and personal gains. It also exhibits ocular-centric bias,
overlooking the multiple ways people experience the world while restricting
access for diverse groups. With this, we propose an approach to XR that places
‘the non-average’ user at the very centre of all design and practice (Alexander
2025).
We also want to move beyond the language of ‘Tech for Good’. That phrase can
imply that the ethical value of a technology is self-evident, or that technical
innovation will resolve complex social problems. Drawing on the framework of
minimal ethics (Zylinska 2009, 2014), we approach responsibility as something
that must be worked out in specific situations. Rather than assuming that more
immersive technology is inherently better, we ask what makes an XR experience
worth having, for whom and under what conditions. Here ethics connects with
wider socio-political issues, leading to the creation of not just better
technology but also more responsible sociotechnical imaginaries (Preece et al.,
2022). Challenging the colonising idea of VR/XR as an ‘empathy machine’
(Nakamura 2020), we position XR beyond simplistic techno-solutionism.
We invite 20-minute papers and project-led presentations from across the arts,
humanities, social sciences, design, creative practice, health sciences,
computing and industry research. Submissions may address artistic work, design
processes, social and cultural analysis, education, healthcare, accessibility,
platform politics or emerging forms of multisensory interaction. We are
particularly interested in work that challenges ocularcentrism, questions
established ideas of immersion or proposes alternatives to proprietary platform
models. The key goal of the conference is to explore XR that not only works but
that works for diverse users and in different configurations of sensory
experience. In other words, we want to showcase XR that not only succeeds
technically and artistically but also delivers ethical and social value.
Possible themes include, but are not limited to:
* Multisensory XR experiences that may include, but also move beyond,
screen-based and headset-led models of immersion.
* The design and evaluation of XR applications involving haptics, spatial
sound, smell or taste.
* Critical approaches to ocularcentrism and the visual bias built into
immersive technologies.
* Accessibility in XR, especially work that begins with the needs of users
who fall outside the dominant assumptions about age, embodiment or sensory
perception.
* Disability-led perspectives on immersive technology, including the
productive role of friction, adaptation and non-standard use.
* Ethical frameworks for assessing what makes an immersive experience
worthwhile, rather than merely effective or engaging.
* The effects of XR on attention, body image and mental wellbeing, including
sensory overload, dissociation and forms of cognitive capture.
* Critical examinations of immersion and the industry ambition to keep users
inside an experience for as long as possible.
* XR beyond the ‘empathy machine’: critiques of simulation as a substitute
for political understanding or social responsibility.
* Open XR infrastructures and alternatives to platform dependency,
proprietary ecosystems and extractive business models.
* The use of multisensory XR in creative practice, cultural heritage,
education or healthcare.
* Speculative design and other practice-based methods for developing more
responsible XR futures.
Please submit an abstract, bio and any relevant technical requirements using
this form<https://forms.cloud.microsoft/pages/responsepage.aspx?id=FM9wg_MWFky4P
HJAcWVDVsuiER-
PQX9Gp_jtchw3eU1UMUVPU0s4MEY3UEdTV09MR0oyV1UyVldZVC4u&route=shorturl>
Submission deadline: 1 September 2026
Notifications of acceptance: 1 October 2026
Should you have any questions, please email Joanna Zylinska:
joanna.zylinska@kcl.ac.uk<mailto:joanna.zylinska@kcl.ac.uk>
The conference is supported with funding from the AHRC Curiosity Grant. There
will be no conference fees.
==========
Best wishes,
Gabriele
Dr Gabriele Salciute Civiliene
Senior Lecturer in Digital Humanities, FHEA, SFHEA
Co-Director of King's Institute for Human and Synthetic Minds | King's College
London<https://www.kcl.ac.uk/research/kings-institute-for-human-and-synthetic-
minds>
XR & Attention Research Group<https://www.kcl.ac.uk/research/xr-and-attention>
Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London
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