[Air-L] CfP Digital Intimacies, young people, and everyday life, 25-26 September 2025 - University of Padova, Italy

[Vittoria Bernardini]

Call for papers | International conference
Digital intimacies, young people and everyday life
25-26 September 2025 - University of Padova, Italy

View the full call here: https://digitalintimacies.eu/conference/

Submission deadline: 27 April 2025

The digital space is gradually contributing to shaping the concept of
intimacy, transforming what was once considered the exclusive domain of the
private sphere into a continuous flow of data, desires, and connections.
>From social media to dating apps, from digital tools for self-expression to
algorithmic imaginaries, intimate relationships are constantly redefined in
the digital environment in increasingly complex and multifaceted ways. For
young people, digital media has become an essential part of their everyday
lives, as they are the fastest group in taking up, transforming and
abandoning new technologies. In their daily media practices, young people
establish, maintain, and perform relationships while negotiating the need
for privacy with the desire for visibility. Digital platforms act as
affective architectures, creating new marketplaces where emotions,
identities, and relationships are continuously profiled and monetized.

As Laurent Berlant (1998) noted, these “contradictory desires” are
intrinsic to the intimacy of daily life. By welcoming the ambiguities and
paradoxes of intimacy, connection and identity, the field of digital
intimacies contends with the constant interplay between public and private
in everyday life. How is intimacy experienced in a context where everything
seems mediated through algorithms and regimes of visibility? What new forms
of affection, sexuality, and bonds emerge in the digital daily lives of
young people, and what risks do these transformations entail? How do young
people draw on, negotiate and transform representations and models of
intimate relationships?

This conference invites researchers to investigate the multiple ways in
which young people interact with, negotiate, and reinvent intimacy in a
progressively digitalized world. Intimacy is not limited to romantic or
sexual relationships, but includes a broader spectrum of dimensions, such
as friendships, family bonds, personal identity, and emotional well-being.
We welcome approaches that move beyond and challenge heteronormative,
Western-centric notions of intimacy, inviting broader and more inclusive
conceptualizations.

The goal of the conference is to create a critical discussion space to
reflect on the opportunities, challenges, and contradictions inherent in
digital intimacies, exploring its intersections with the social, cultural,
and technological dimensions of daily life. While the digital offers new
possibilities for connections, self-expression, and identity construction,
it simultaneously raises questions about privacy, surveillance,
commodification, and inequalities.

While the main focus of the conference lies within media, cultural, and
gender studies—particularly concerning young people, digital intimacies,
and everyday life—interdisciplinary perspectives are welcome.

We invite presentations on the following topics, but not limited to:

   - Dating, relationships, and intimate connections
   - Sexual expressions and practices, including sexting and pornography
   - Gender identities, performances and representations
   - LGBTQIA+ activism and communities
   - Intersectional perspectives on digital intimacies
   - Friendship and networks of care
   - Constant connection and digital disconnection in interpersonal
   communication
   - Bodies, health, and sex education
   - Online and offline abuse in intimate relationships
   - Datification and commodification of intimacy
   - Platforms, algorithms, and digital monitoring, including intimate
   partner surveillance and location tracking
   - Intimate citizenship and rights
   - Methodological and ethical challenges in doing research with young
   people and digital intimacies


Abstract Submission
Please submit your 350-400 words abstract in English, including contact
details before 27 April 2025. Abstracts will be reviewed via a blind peer
review process.

Please submit your abstract via Google Forms:
https://forms.gle/cmmfHvcbfh5ZzjYo6

Find the full call for papers and submission guidelines here:
http://www.digitalintimacies.eu/conference