Call for Papers
MeCCSA Postgraduate Network Conference 2026
Media and Sustainability
University of Reading,
Minghella Studios, Whiteknights Campus
Reading RG6 6BT
9th September 2026

Organising committee: Babsie Keulemans, Emir Anday and Elizabeth Heaney
Any questions about the conference or the submission process can be directed to:
Babsie Keulemans – e.l.keulemans@pgr.reading.ac.uk
The MeCCSA Postgraduate Network is pleased to invite postgraduate researchers and
creative practitioners to submit proposals for the 2026 MeCCSA PGN Conference,
hosted by the Department of Film, Theatre & Television at the University of Reading.
The conference will take place in the Minghella Studios, on the University’s
Whiteknights campus. The event brings together postgraduate researchers working
across media, communication, cultural studies, screen studies and performing arts to
share their research in a supportive and inclusive environment.

Conference Theme: Media and Sustainability
At a moment shaped by ecological crisis, institutional precarity, technological
acceleration, and shifting labour conditions, questions of sustainability have become
central to the fields of media, communication, cultural studies, screen studies and
performing arts. The theme invites participants to explore how media industries, forms,
cultures, and research practices endure, adapt, resist or reimagine themselves within
unstable or emerging environments. We also encourage reflection on the sustainability
of academic and creative labour, and the infrastructures that support media work.
These conversations build on a growing body of critical work across media, screen,
performing arts and cultural research that engage with sustainability through questions
of representation, creative practice, aesthetics, institutions and the conditions under
which work is made and sustained (for example in the work of scholars such as Salma Monani, Sean Cubitt, Adam O’Brien, Phaedra Pezzullo, Nicole Starosielski, Laura U.
Marks and Lisa Woynarski).

The University of Reading provides a particularly resonant setting for these
conversations. The University was named Sustainable University of the Year 2025 by
The Times and The Sunday Times Good University Guide, recognising its sustained
commitment to environmental responsibility.

Participants are encouraged to interpret the conference theme broadly and creatively.
Submissions from interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary perspectives are warmly
welcomed, including practice-based work.

Read more here.

Proposals should be submitted by Friday 15th May 2026