Knowing – AI
Anthropological and Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Knowledge Production with and beyond Artificial Intelligence
10. Arbeitstagung der Kommission Digitale Anthropologie der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Empirische Kulturwissenschaft
Ludwig-Uhland-Institut für Empirische Kulturwissenschaft, Universität Tübingen
Digital Anthropology Lab Tübingen (https://digitalanthropologylab.org/)
Excellenz Cluster: Machine Learning for Science, Universität Tübingen
14-16 September 2026
Veranstaltunsgort: Alte Aula, University of Tübingen
Organisation: Christoph Bareither, Lukas Griessl, Libuše Hannah Vepřek, Berit Zimmerling
Call for Papers
The recent acceleration of artificial intelligence (AI), in particular in the area of generative AI (GenAI), is currently having strong transformative effects on knowledge production in the areas of research and education, museums and memory institutions, social media and journalism, and more. Researchers, teachers, and students in academic and school environments, as well as museum practitioners, curators, educational social media influencers, journalists, and other knowledge workers, are beginning to incorporate AI into their daily knowledge practices. Throughout the last few decades, anthropologists and interdisciplinary scholars (e.g. from the field of science and technology studies) have already explored how technologies shape knowledge production. However, AI-based technologies have introduced new aspects into the relations between human actors, technologies and knowledge production, especially through their capacity to carry a particularly strong form of agency and to actively participate in and shape epistemic practices. At the same time, AI introduces new frictions, opacities, and conflicts into previously established epistemic orders. It also carries the risk of reproducing bias, reinforcing dominant ways of knowing and ‚flattening‘ knowledge rather than fostering novelty and creativity. In response, many knowledge practitioners advocate for critically reflecting the use of these new technologies, promoting knowledge practices that resist the growing influence of AI.
The transformations caused by recent AI developments are subject to interdisciplinary debates, to which strong contributions can be made by anthropologists. The 10th conference of the Digital Anthropology Section of the DGEKW, organized by the Digital Anthropology Lab at the University of Tübingen in cooperation with the Excellence Cluster Machine Learning: New Perspectives for Science, will therefore focus on how anthropological perspectives and approaches can enrich our understanding of AI-related transformations of knowledge production. It examines how knowledge is produced with and beyond AI, exploring its role in shaping everyday routines in a variety of knowledge fields, its integration into imagined futures in these fields, and the various forms of resistance it evokes. Potential questions that could be addressed by papers include:
- How do emerging human-AI collaborations change the way that knowledge is produced and consumed in various fields, from universities and museums to social media and journalism? How can cultural anthropologists make use of AI technologies‘ potential in teaching and research while also critically addressing their many problems and limitations
- How can anthropological and interdisciplinary approaches be effectively combined to study AI’s agency in the production of knowledge?
- How does AI transform social and emotional relations as a central dimension of epistemic practices?
- What ethical questions arise when AI is incorporated into knowledge production?
- What can anthropology contribute to emerging discussions on AI literacy?
- How are museums, archives, and memory institutions using AI for exploring new pathways of knowledge production and education?
- How does AI threaten and destabilize institutionalized and established forms of knowledge production through its affordances in the generation and circulation of mis- and disinformation, for example on social media?
- What specific potential do ethnographic methods offer for investigating human-AI relations in science and education?
- How can we conceptualise the agency AI plays in knowledge practices and how does AI differ from other technologies in this context?
- Which new methods and methodological approaches does AI offer for anthropology and ethnographic research? How can existing methods be extended through AI?
We invite papers that introduce anthropological perspectives, methodological approaches, and theoretical considerations to address these different areas—and we explicitly welcome authors with an interdisciplinary background who want to engage in a dialogue with anthropological approaches. Papers for presentations should aim for a 20-minute presentation followed by a ten-minute discussion. We also welcome proposals for workshops (of 90 minutes) addressing the fields above in a more dialogical style or providing spaces for ‚hands-on‘ discussions such as the use of GenAI in teaching. Finally, we also welcome proposals for posters that will be presented during a poster session including lightning talks about each poster’s content.
Please send your paper, poster, and/or workshop proposals (including your name, email address, paper title, and abstract not exceeding 300 words) until January 31st, 2026, to: digital.anthropology.lab@lui.uni-tuebingen.de