JEDI @ SIGIR 2026

The JEDI workshop is an interdisciplinary forum for researchers who are interested in critically interrogating the role of technology as a mechanism for accessing information access technology in the struggle for democracy, social justice, and emancipation from social, economic, and political oppression. Our goal is to explore the necessary changes in our technological, organizational, and social arrangements in the field to realize information access as a force for justice, emancipation, and democracy; and to safeguard our information ecosystems from authoritarian and corporate capture. Our goal is to realize information access as a force for justice, emancipation, and democracy, and safeguard our information ecosystems from authoritarian and corporate capture. This involves exploring necessary changes to our technological design, as well as our individual and institutional relationships (academic, industry, government, and civil society) that shape the field. As such, we welcome participants from all interested disciplines, including but not limited to law, social science, information science, human computer interaction, and of course information retrieval.

Important Dates

Proposal submission: April 16, 2026
Proposal notifications: May 21, 2026
Workshop: July 24, 2026

Positionality

This workshop takes an explicitly political lens, recognizing that information and access to information are both profoundly political and represent sites of tension between oppression and emancipation. We reject any ambivalence or false neutrality with respect to oppressor-oppressed relations and situate our work in recent calls (SWIRL report / IRRJ paper) to explicitly align information access research with humanistic, democratic, and emancipatory goals, and the elimination of all structural forms of oppression including colonialism, racism, cisheteropatriarchy, classism, casteism, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, antisemitism, and ableism.

Code of Conduct

We welcome all attendees who support justice-oriented, emancipatory, and democratic futures. This workshop is intended to be a space to connect and foster shared understanding of how information access can aid universal humanization and struggles for social justice and emancipation for all. Please note that this workshop is not a forum to debate whether any group of human beings deserves or should expect justice and emancipation, and any participant who attempts this will be strictly asked to leave. We note, too, that loss of historical privilege does not constitute oppression, and anyone attempting to frame it as such will be warned, and then asked to leave.

Call for Presentations

We are soliciting proposals for presentations from the community in the form of extended abstracts. Accepted proposals will have the opportunity to be presented at the workshop as either short talks and / or posters. Relevant presentations may explore questions like:

How does the conflict between (i) democracy and authoritarianism, and (ii) emancipation and oppression play out across current information access practices?What role do current systems and practices of the information access field play in the conflict between (i) democracy and authoritarianism or (ii) emancipation and oppression?
What practices can help us shift the field towards supporting social justice, emancipation, and democracy?
How do we successfully proceed to challenge power and structures of oppression, going beyond just talking about Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion (DEI) in our communities and about fairness and bias in our systems?How do we move our community beyond just talking about DEI and fairness / bias, and towards actively challenging power and structures of oppression?
How can we safeguard information ecosystems against authoritarian and corporate capture, and the public from mass surveillance and manipulation?
What can the information access discipline learn from feminist, queer, decolonial, anti-racist, anti-casteist, anti-ableist, and abolitionist perspectives?
How can information access push towards epistemic justice and safeguard marginalized perspectives and knowledge from erasure; and promote critical thought and sociopolitical awareness?
How can we make visible and understand how information access facilitates collective sense-making, particularly those that remain implicit, and challenge normative sense-making?
How should information access research situate itself in ongoing social justice movements struggles against oppression and authoritarianism and realize its work grounded in practices of organizing and movement building?

We particularly encourage submissions informed by cross-disciplinary perspectives and justice-oriented scholarship; and those situated in organizing and movement building for social justice.

Submission and Review Process

We welcome extended abstract submissions via EasyChair (link forthcoming). Make sure to select the "Justice, Emancipation, Democracy, and Information Access (JEDI)" Track when creating a submission.

Abstracts should be 1-2 pages (excluding references), and must be submitted in PDF format. We do not require adherence to a specific ACM template; but submissions should be in single-column format with at least 11-point font size.

Submissions will be reviewed by a Program Committee through a single-anonymized peer review process. Submissions should include the list of authors, and optionally a positionality statement.

Submissions will be evaluated based on quality, clarity, and relevance, with an emphasis on fostering engaging discussions at the workshop.

All accepted abstracts will be non-archival. Presentation proposals based on unpublished, currently under review, and previously published work are all welcome.