Inter / Trans Disciplinary

MeCCSA Postgraduate Network Conference

We are pleased to say that due to exceptional demand, we are extending the deadline to submit an abstract for the 2026 MeCCSA Postgraduate Network Conference, which will take place on 9^th September 2026 in the Minghella Studios, University of Reading. The new deadline is Monday 25^th May 2026.

This year’s theme is Media and Sustainability and invites postgraduate researchers to explore how media industries, forms, cultures, and research practices endure, adapt, resist or reimagine themselves within unstable or emerging environments. We also encourage reflection on the sustainability of academic and creative labour, and the infrastructures that support media work.  

Participants are encouraged to interpret the conference theme broadly and creatively. Submissions from interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary perspectives are warmly welcomed, including practice-based work.  

Possible areas of interest include, but are not limited to:  

• Sustainable media industries: policy, production cultures, funding, and independent practice. 
• Sustainable creative and research methodologies: slow scholarship, decolonial and feminist methods, ethics of care, collaboration and community partnership. 
• Environmental sustainability and media: climate communication, ecocinema, eco-media, green production, and environmental representation.  
• Sustainable archives and preservation: memory, heritage, obsolescence, and care for audiovisual materials.  
• Sustainable digital technologies and infrastructures: platforms, AI, media infrastructure, resource extraction, and the environmental costs of data.  
• Sustainable identities and communities: queer, Indigenous, diasporic, and disabled media-making. Visibility, survival, and continuity.  
• Sustaining the self: wellbeing, burnout, emotional labour, and the lived realities of postgraduate research.   

In recognition of the diverse ways postgraduate researchers work and communicate research, we invite proposals in a range of formats, including:  

• Paper presentations (15 minutes) 
• Panel proposals (typically 3-5 named contributors) 
• Practice-based or creative contributions, including film, audiovisual work, performance or artistic practice 

We particularly welcome work-in-progress and contributions from early-stage postgraduate researchers.  

Submission deadline: Monday 25th May 2026 at midday (GMT)

Submission link: Microsoft Form

Further details can be found here. Alternatively, feel free to email us with any questions.