The Japanese Association for Digital Humanities (JADH) is pleased to announce its 15th annual conference, to be held at Kyushu University on September 11-13, 2026.

Digital data do not exist in isolation. They come to life only within specific contexts of use, interpretation, infrastructure, and care. Following Jakob von Uexküll’s concept of Umwelt, this conference understands data as embedded in situated worlds of meaning—worlds shaped by disciplines, institutions, technologies, cultures, languages, and communities. Umwelt is the contextually constituted world in which data gain meaning through use and interpretation.

Under the theme “Whose World, Whose Data? Sustainability in Digital Umwelts,” this conference invites participants to rethink digital sustainability not simply as long-term preservation or technical endurance, but as a question of whose worlds are sustained, transformed, or allowed to fade through digital practices.

Sustainability, from this perspective, is not only about keeping data alive. It is also about circulation, reuse, reinterpretation, care, neglect, and even release. Data may migrate across multiple digital Umwelts—archives, platforms, communities, disciplines—changing their meanings and functions along the way. At the same time, some data may lose relevance, remain unused, or demand ethical reconsideration regarding their continued existence.

This conference provides a forum to explore how digital humanities can engage with these questions across various theoretical, methodological, practical, ethical, and regional perspectives. Contributions may be theoretical, methodological, empirical, technical, practice-based, reflective, ethical, or regional, and interdisciplinary approaches are especially encouraged.

Topics of Interest (include, but are not limited to)

We welcome papers, panels, posters, and other formats addressing topics such as:

- Digital sustainability through adaptation, transformation, and reuse

- Data lifecycles, circulation, reuse, and transformation

- Umwelt, context, and situated meaning in digital humanities

- AI and Machine Learning as distinct digital Umwelts

- Whose data are preserved, and whose are marginalized or lost

- Community-based archives and local knowledge infrastructures

- Indigenous, minority, and endangered-language data practices

- Ethical questions of care, ownership, access, and responsibility

- Data governance, power, and institutional environments

- Infrastructure, platforms, and their implicit “worlds”

- Forgetting, obsolescence, deletion, and non-use as design choices

- Cross-cultural and cross-regional perspectives on digital data

- Environmental, social, and cultural sustainability in DH

- Rethinking archives, databases, and collections as living worlds

However, it's important to clarify that the conference's scope extends beyond the theme. Topics of interest span a wide range, including AI, data mining, information design and modeling, software studies, and humanities research enabled through the digital medium; computer-based research and computer applications in literary, linguistic, cultural, and historical studies, including electronic literature, public humanities; and interdisciplinary aspects of modern scholarship. Examples might include text analysis, corpora, corpus linguistics, language processing, language learning, and endangered languages; the digital arts, architecture, music, film, theater, new media and related areas; the creation and curation of humanities digital resources; and the role of Digital Humanities in academic curricula. The range of topics covered by Digital Humanities can also be consulted in the journal Digital Scholarship in the Humanities (http://dsh.oxfordjournals.org/), Oxford University Press.

Abstracts submitted should be of 500-1000 words in length in English, including the title and authors’ names.

Deadline extended! Please submit abstracts via the ConfTool website below by 11:59 PM, 26 Apr, 2026 (HAST) .

https://www.conftool.net/jadh-2026/

In addition to filling in the abstract field on ConfTool, please also upload a PDF or DOCX file of your abstract. The same content as entered in the abstract field is sufficient; you do not need to prepare a separately formatted version. Figures or special formatting may be included in the file if desired. 

Presenters will be notified of acceptance on May 30, 2026.

Type of proposals:

1. Interactive presentations: Interactive poster session presentations may include work-in-progress on any of the topics described above as well as demonstrations of computer technology, software, and digital projects.

2. Short papers: Short papers are allotted 10 minutes (plus 5 minutes for questions) and are suitable for describing work-in-progress and reporting on shorter experiments and software and tools in early stages of development.

3. Long papers: Long papers are allotted 20 minutes (plus 10 minutes for questions) and are intended for presenting substantial unpublished research and reporting on significant new digital resources or methodologies.

4. Panels: Panels (90 minutes) are comprised of either: (a) Three long papers on a joint theme. All abstracts should be submitted together with a statement, of approximately 500-1000 words, outlining the session topic and its relevance to current directions in the digital humanities; or (b) A panel of four to six speakers. The panel organizer should submit a 500-1000 words outline of the topic session and its relevance to current directions in the digital humanities as well as an indication from all speakers of their willingness to participate.

Use of generative AI language tools:

Recently, while chatbots as a new text-generating tool are becoming widespread, various problems have been pointed out. Since the Digital Humanities field needs to respond constructively to this situation, the JADH Program committee does not prohibit it. However, at least at present, generative AI language tools will not be recognized as an author. Instead, please report the significant use of generative AI language tools, as described in the arXiv's policy.

https://blog.arxiv.org/2023/01/31/arxiv-announces-new-policy-on-chatgpt-and-similar-tools/

After the conference:

JADH strongly encourages you to improve your presentations at this conference based on the discussions during your presentation and submit them to our open-access journal, the Journal of the Japanese Association for Digital Humanities (https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/browse/jjadh/list/-char/en).

Contact

Please direct inquiries about any aspect of the conference to:

conf2026 [ at ] jadh.org

Organized by: JADH, Japanese Association for Digital Humanities

Co-organized by:

Joint Graduate School of Digital Humanities, Kyushu University

Faculty of Humanities, Kyushu University

Department of Library Science, Graduate School of Integrated Frontier Sciences, Kyushu University

JSPS KAKENHI 24K03232