Call for abstracts: Understanding and Re-Imagining the Digital Welfare State

This is an invitation to the two-day workshop “Understanding and Re-Imagining the Digital Welfare State” in Oslo, 12–13 February 2026 (OsloMet, Pillestredet campus). The workshop brings together early career researchers, postdoctoral researchers, and colleagues working on the digitalisation of welfare, from automation and predictive analytics to surveillance, data justice, and design. The aim is twofold: to critically understand how the digital welfare state is taking shape today, and to explore how it might be re-imagined for more equitable and democratic futures.

The program will feature presentations alongside plenary lectures by:

• Professor Anne Kaun (Södertörn University)
• Professor Morgan Currie (University of Edinburgh)

Across Europe and beyond, welfare systems are increasingly governed through digital
infrastructures: automated decision-making, predictive analytics, and large-scale data
collection. These developments, often framed as efficiency gains or fraud prevention,
have in practice intensified conditionality, expanded surveillance, and deepened the
exclusion of society’s most vulnerable members. Scholars and advocates have
cautioned against a “digital welfare dystopia” where rights, dignity, and equity are
sacrificed in the name of modernisation.

At the same time, to re-imagine better futures we must first understand the digital welfare
state as it exists today: its technologies, its politics, its consequences for claimants and
frontline workers.

This two-day workshop turns its attention to both the present and the future of digital
welfare. The aim is to create a space for interdisciplinary dialogue across social
science, humanities, criminology, law, and design, bringing together those who study
what is with those who imagine what could be.

Abstract deadline: 31 October 2025

Submission: 300–400 words to Marijke Roosen maroo2167@oslomet.no and Lior Volinz Lior.Volinz@inst-krim.si

Participation is free, and a small number of travel grants are available for early career researchers without institutional funding.

More information can be found here: CfP – Workshop the Digital Welfare State