Current Challenges and Future Directions
An IAMCR pre-conference
Co-organised by IAMCR's Environment, Science, and Risk Communication Section and the Climate Social Science Network’s working group on Critical Studies of Climate Media, Discourse, and Power, this pre-conference will reflect on the past, current, and future trajectories of the field of climate change communication. In line with IAMCR’s main conference theme of Peripheries and Connections: Media, Communication, and Transformation, this event will bring together scholars from a range of career levels and geographical locations to take stock of research on climate media.
In this pre-conference, we will collaboratively co-imagine possible new directions for climate media research that are transformative and have impact within, across, and beyond the university. To this end, we encourage practice-based abstracts from climate media-makers, NGOs, activists, and community organizers in addition to traditional scholarly papers. In stride with the recent essay titled Climate media amidst technopolitical change: challenges, transformations, and new directions for research (Wetts, Morris, Boykoff, et al, 2025), we also welcome scholars to reflect on what more impactful partnerships outside of the academy could look like and how to build and support these collaborative spaces. We also seek papers that explore peripheralised voices in climate media, the consequences of such peripheralisation, and how they can be brought into the centre of climate research. Practitioners and scholarship from less-researched geographical contexts are encouraged.
Abstracts should be no more than 500 words, including the author’s name (and co-authors’ names, if applicable), contact details, and affiliation(s).
The deadline for submissions is 24 March, 2026.
Date and time
Saturday, 27 June 2026 - 09:00-16:00
Location
Dublin City University
Participation and Registration
Notice of acceptance will be sent out along with details on how to register for the pre-conference event by April 3, 2026.
Convenors
- IAMCR Environment, Science, and Risk Communication Section
- Climate Social Science Network’s working group on Critical Studies of Climate Media, Discourse, and Power
Organisers
- Hanna E. Morris (University of Toronto)
- Emily Diamond (University of Rhode Island)
- James Painter (Oxford University)
- Brenda McNally (Dublin City University)
- Lluis de Nadal (University of Glasgow)
- Sylvia Hayes (University of Exeter)
- Allen Munoriyarwa (Walter Sisulu University)
- Marc Esteve del Valle (University of Groningen)
- Kelly Perry (Duke University)
- Loredana Loy (University of Miam)
- Zeina Seaifan (McGill University)
- Claire Konkes (University of Tasmania)
- Miki Kawabata (Mejiro University)
- Sibo Chen (Toronto Metropolitan University)
Contact
Hanna E. Morris hanna.morris@utoronto.ca
