Digital IDEAS 2026

Digital Studies Institute presents… the 6th Annual Digital IDEAS Summer Institute

The Digital Studies Institute at the University of Michigan invites applicants for our 6th Annual Digital IDEAS Summer Institute, to be held May 31-June 5, 2026, at the University of Michigan, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S. The IDEAS summer program supports scholars and thinkers at the intersection of critical digital studies, social justice, and public intellectualism. The institute’s week-long community-building workshop, led by faculty director Sarah Murray, hosts graduate students, postdocs, independent scholars, aca-adjacent artists and activists, and those in early career transition.

This year we invite participants to join us in thinking with the theme of AFTER.

Taking up Brian Massumi’s provocation to problematize the “post” in posthumanism, we see this year’s institute as an opportunity to engage critical questions through an After framework. 

We are thrilled to host Dr. Aubrey Anable as a featured faculty moderator as we welcome intensive inquiry into Aftermaths, Afterlives, Afterworlds, and the Hereafter.

Aligning with crises in global politics, academia, and economics, we find ourselves in a deeply existential conjuncture defined by a zeitgeist of decline, deadness, and “done-ness.” From “lying flat” in China to “being cooked” for Gen Z, from “end of times” memes to the bot, slop, and sludge of a dead Internet, we find ourselves in a strange historical moment. How do we approach the act of thinking, the act of writing and producing, the act of resistance with ideas, and the practice of being an intellectual?

So, what now? and what after?

This call for applicants initiates our effort to bring together participants with a wide range of research topics and practices. In the harsh reality of after-ness, IDEAS aims to rebuild the groundwork necessary to assemble pragmatic futures of remediation, redress, repair, and longevity. We aim to upend the defeatist tendencies of an overwhelming political environment and harness the collective power of strategic continuation. 

So, you tell us: how do we take up After as a critical positionality?

We invite scholars across disciplines who are engaged in the critical study of postdigital cultures. We support a range of analytical frameworks, methodologies, and objects of study that can reasonably be considered digital studies in scope. We invite conversations guided by the following catalyzing themes:

AFTER/Maths

After/math has a dual meaning: first, to consider what it means to be an intellectual at this historical conjuncture of Overwhelm? How do we approach the urgencies demanded of the creative-critical-cultural researcher in a moment that feels “beyond repair”? And two, how do we resist a contemporary context driven by an abiding faith in numbers, data, and enumeration?

After/Acceleration

How do we study tech cultures by popping the hype balloon? How can the best of academia be disarticulated from accelerationist late capitalism? Do we join the accelerationists or the Afrofuturists? If we can’t slow down, how can we slow burn in activist academic life?

After/Life

What are our hauntings and residualities? Who or what are the ghosts in the machine? How do we value life and the living when death is datafied and disentangled from feeling? how do we reconcile who/what is left behind in the after? And how to we get past the “post”?

After/Method

Taking legacy russell’s work as inspiration, we are also including this year a methods workshop. how do we recenter feminist methods like glitch and joy? how do we participate in scholarly work that builds technologies and tech practices in non-extractive abolitionist ways? how do we design art and tech, build research, and write theory that recuperates, harnesses, rejects denial, and sees futures as more than solutions?

Cost of Attendance

$750 - Registration Fee

$1,300 - Registration Fee including UM Dorm Housing Accommodations for the duration of the week (check-in Saturday May 30th; checkout Saturday June 6th)

*Please note: For all DSI Graduate Certificate Students the registration fee is reduced to $250*

How to Apply

Applications can be submitted online using this application form.

If this form presents any difficulty, you are welcome to complete the application via this Word Document and email all application materials to the Digital IDEAS Coordinator, Sarah Torsch, at dsi-studentservices@umich.edu

The Digital IDEAS 2026 Application Deadline is Sunday, February 1, 2026