[Air-L] Call for Papers: PRESENCE 2020

[Matthew Lombard]

CALL FOR PAPERS

PRESENCE 2020
18th conference of the International Society for Presence Research (ISPR; 
http://ispr.info/)
Online + Synchronous
October 23, 2020
https://ispr.info/call-presence-2020

Conference theme: Presence during and after the pandemic

The 18th PRESENCE conference will take place as a one-day, fast-track 
online conference. All presence topics are also welcome but submissions 
related to early phase projects, papers, and studies about the impacts of the 
pandemic on presence phenomena now and in the years ahead are 
particularly encouraged. 

The 19th PRESENCE conference will take place next fall 2021 in Orlando 
that was originally planned this year.

* Submission deadline: August 20, 2020 (with some flexibility - email the 
conference chair at lombard at temple.edu if you need a few extra days)

* Online submissions should be submitted via EasyChair: 
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=p2020

* Notification of acceptance decisions: September 10, 2020

* Finished, camera-ready papers due: October 10, 2020

PLEASE HELP US GET THE WORD OUT BY SHARING THIS CALL FOR 
PAPERS

OVERVIEW

Telepresence, often shortened to presence, is a state or perception in which 
we overlook or misconstrue the role of technology and feel present in the 
environments and/or connected to the people or things we experience via 
technology. It´s increasingly relevant to a wide range of media experiences 
and application areas.

Following a series of17 successful Presence conference events, 
PRESENCE 2020 will retain the single-track format and enjoyable social 
environment of previous conferences while featuring an expanded variety of 
paper and poster sessions, panel discussions, keynote presentations, 
hands-on demonstrations of presence applications/services/projects, and 
informal discussion, networking and fun. Members of both academic and 
industry communities are welcome.


BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

The term presence has many formal and informal meanings but is used by a 
growing interdisciplinary scholarly community to refer to experiences in which 
technology is overlooked or misconstrued in some way during a mediated 
experience. Long a focus of those who study virtual reality and 
environments, it´s increasingly relevant to a wide range of media 
experiences. For example, presence occurs when we get "lost" in the world 
of a novel, TV show, movie, video game or theme park ride; we´re convinced 
by the realism of paintings or graphic designs; we treat our cars, computers 
or other machines as if they have personalities of their own, and we feel like 
we´re "with" a person we talk to on the phone or in a video conference.

The presence research community has been working to identify causes, 
characteristics and consequences of diverse presence experiences. The 
consequences identified so far - including arousal/relaxation, empathy, 
enjoyment, persuasion and more - make clear the importance and power of 
presence to improve communication across a wide variety of contexts and 
applications of interest to scholars and those who create media technologies 
and content. Presence as a concept and set of phenomena is related to the 
work being done in nearly every field and business sector from art to 
zoology, with particularly direct applications in business, education, 
entertainment and health. The 4000+ posts in ISPR Presence News 
(http://ispr.info/posts) and thousands more on its predecessor, the presence-l 
listserv (http://listserv.temple.edu/archives/presence-l.html), along with the 
Presence Bibliography on the ISPR website (http://ispr.info/), illustrate the 
breadth of presence applications, and the breadth, depth and value of 
presence scholarship.

The objectives of the conference are to deepen and update the knowledge of 
those already familiar with presence and introduce new scholars and 
practitioners to the centrality, pervasiveness, and value of presence 
phenomena, theory and research.  The overarching goal is to help integrate 
and increase collaborative scholarship on presence.


SUBMISSIONS

Topics

We seek original, high quality papers and demonstrations that contribute to 
our collective understanding of presence phenomena and applications in 
any/every aspect of life. Topics of interest include (but are absolutely not 
limited to):

* Presence theory
* Measures of presence
* Presence and emotion
* Presence and education
* Presence and social interaction
* Gender and Presence
* Neuroscience approaches to Presence
* Presence in gaming and entertainment
* Philosophical perspectives on presence
* Ethics of presence
* Presence technologies and applications (e.g. in business, arts, medicine 
and therapy)
* The future of presence research

Theme: Presence during and after the pandemic

Presence experiences were already becoming more common in many 
aspects of life before the Coronavirus pandemic, but the current crisis has 
vastly accelerated the need and desire for effective presence experiences 
and creative progress in the uses of technology to create them. All-online 
teaching at every level of education, virtual graduation ceremonies, working 
from home via online platforms, live streaming of music concerts and theater 
performances, virtual travel experiences, virtual business and academic 
conferences, and so much more represent huge changes for societies, 
organizations and individuals regarding presence. If ever there was an 
appropriate group to explore these changes and their implications for the 
future it's the presence community. Individual descriptive, research, theory, 
or position papers as well as dedicated panels related to this theme are 
encouraged. ISPR will also organize a session in which we trial and discuss 
the characteristics of a variety of social presence platforms (e.g. Zoom, 
WebEx, Teams, Discord, Mozilla Hubs, etc), with the goal of producing a 
co-authored publishable paper outlining our conclusions about their 
strengths and weaknesses in producing effective presence experiences.
[NOTE: Submissions on the previously announced Theme 2 below are still 
welcome!]

Theme 2: The world of presence

Presence experiences are becoming more common in more aspects of life 
for more and more people around the world. These experiences have the 
potential to bring diverse individuals, groups and nations together but also 
isolate them in their own mediated realities. What are the contours of 
presence around the world and what implications and challenges does it 
pose for researchers, scholars, technology designers and users, and 
citizens? We invite submission in all of the categories below that identify, 
consider and ideally propose specific steps we can take to make presence a 
force for positive rather than negative change. Data-based projects, concept 
and theory building work as well as personal (first person) reflections are 
encouraged.

Categories

We invite researchers and practitioners to submit their work in the categories 
below. All submissions are to be in APA format (http://www.apastyle.org/) 
and except for the separate title page not identify the author(s) directly or 
indirectly (for blind peer review). A template for Microsoft Word is available at 
https://tinyurl.com/PC-APA-template-Word  and a template for LaTeX 
(https://www.latex-project.org/) is available at 
https://tinyurl.com/PC-APA-template-Latex.

* PAPERS: Comprehensive descriptions of research or design work and/or 
theoretical investigation within the scope of the conference; up to 30 pages 
(including references) in APA format. Papers must relate to existing literature 
on presence and make an original contribution to it.

* SHORT PAPERS: Short papers may be up to 12 pages in APA format.

* POSTERS: Visual display presentations. Poster proposals must describe 
and/or contain early drafts of the visual display. Accepted poster abstracts 
will be displayed during a dedicated session of the conference that begins 
with short oral previews, and then published in the conference Proceedings.

* DEMONSTRATIONS/EXHIBITIONS: Step-by-step audiovisual 
demonstrations and/or hands-on experiences of non-commercial work within 
the scope of the conference. Accepted demonstration/exhibition proposals 
will be presented during a dedicated session of the conference and included 
in the conference Proceedings. For the exhibitions of commercial products, 
please contact us for sponsorship terms and opportunities.

* PANELS: Presence 2020 welcomes panel proposals which allow panelists 
and participants to discuss any topic relevant to presence, especially the 
conference theme of challenges. Discussion and paper panel submissions 
must include the following: (1) title, (2) description and rationale (75 words or 
less), (3) titles and brief abstracts (100 words or less) for each panelist, and 
(4) a complete list of participants along with their institutional affiliations and 
contact information.

Proceedings

All accepted submissions will be collected in the official conference 
proceedings (with ISBN) and will be permanently available for download in 
the ISPR conference archive.

Procedure

Online submissions should be submitted via EasyChair: 
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=p2020 


IMPORTANT DATES

* Submission deadline: August 20, 2020 (with some flexibility - email the 
conference chair at lombard at temple.edu if you need a few extra days)

* Notification of acceptance decisions: September 10, 2020

* Finished, camera-ready papers due: October 10, 2020


LOCATION/VENUE

The conference will take place online via Zoom. Details forthcoming.


ABOUT ISPR

The International Society for Presence Research (ISPR) is a non-profit 
membership organization founded in 2002 to support academic research 
related to the concept of (tele)presence. ISPR has sponsored 17 successful 
international conferences (beginning informally in 1998), providing richly 
social opportunities to share scholarship and applications of the presence 
concept. The ISPR website (http://ispr.info) serves as a resource for those 
who conduct research, develop theory, design, market, write about, or simply 
are interested in, the concept and phenomena of presence. ISPR Presence 
News (http://ispr.info/posts), available via the ISPR website, provides current 
news stories, calls for papers and participation, position announcements, 
and other informative posts every weekday (a total of nearly 4000 posts 
since 2009).


ORGANIZERS and CONTACT

Matthew Lombard, Temple University (lombard at temple.edu)
Cheryl Bracken, Cleveland State University
Jihyun Kim, University of Central Florida
Eugene Kukshinov, Temple University
SongYi Lee, Temple University
Kun Xu, University of Florida
Hocheol Yang, Temple University
   
-- 
Matthew Lombard, Ph.D.
Co-Chair, Department of Media Studies & Production
Klein College of Media and Communication
Temple University
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

President, International Society for Presence Research (ISPR)

lombard at temple.edu
http://matthewlombard.com