[Air-L] Call for abstracts: Simondon and AI - STS Italia Conference 2025

[Susana Gomes]

** Call for abstracts **

We invite you to submit an abstract to the panel “Simondon and AI: A Collective Individuation in the Year of His Birth Centenary” at the upcoming STS Italia Conference, taking place in Milan, Italy on 11-13 June 2025.

Deadline for submissions: 3 February 2025

At this historical juncture, when thinking about society seems inseparable from AI and related data-driven technologies, the work of French philosopher Gilbert Simondon is receiving renewed attention. Although his writings predate recent advances in AI and machine learning by decades, they are becoming increasingly relevant to contemporary reflections on these technologies. Simondon’s legacy spans disciplines, influencing theorisations of technical cognition (Hayles, 2017), automated labour (Stiegler, 2016), digital media (Hui, 2016), Blackness and computation (Amaro, 2022), and algorithmic governmentality (Bardin and Ferrari, 2022), as well as research on specific technologies and contexts (e.g., Liyanage, 2024).

In retrospect, the resurgence of Simondon’s oeuvre is hardly surprising. In On the Mode of Existence of Technical Objects (2017), his commitment to placing technicity at the heart of sociocultural enquiry resonates deeply in an era of inscrutable AI systems. At the same time, his tripartite framework of elements, individuals, and ensembles continues to offer a rich lexicon for articulating the co-constitution of agencies across the human-technology continuum. Equally important is his pursuit of a relational and processual ontology, further elaborated in Individuation in Light of Notions of Form and Information (2020), which has long unsettled the rigid binaries and essentialism that advancements in AI expose as ever more untenable. Unifying his thought is the notion of the transindividual—a co-individuating dynamic linking individual and collective life—which unfolds as fertile terrain for exploring the uncharted forms of sociality AI may yet bring into being.

As we mark the centenary of Simondon’s birth, we embrace his genuine technical curiosity as a lens for engaging with AI both critically and generatively, thereby avoiding the comforting retreats into either technophobia or technophilia. With plans for a follow-up special issue, this panel welcomes contributions—whether theoretical, empirical, or both—that engage with Simondon’s ideas, unrestricted by disciplinary, thematic, or methodological boundaries. Rather than outlining a predefined set of research questions or topics, we encourage submissions that, once brought together, may reveal emerging patterns of political concerns, ethical orientations, and research trajectories, especially those intersecting STS concepts and theories. In this way, we hope to facilitate a collective process of individuation, with Simondon and AI as the associated milieu.

For submission guidelines and panel details (panel no. 3) visit: https://stsitalia.org/call-for-abstracts/#theme

Panel organisers: Fabio Iapaolo (Politecnico di Milano), Ludovico Rella (Durham University) and Susana Aires (King’s College London).

With best wishes,

Susana

Susana Aires
PhD Candidate
Department of Digital Humanities

King’s College London
Strand Campus,
London, WC2R 2LS.