“Traveling Technologies in and beyond the Nexus of Tech, Humanitarianism and Gender”

There is a workshop organised within the COST Action DATAMIG – Data Matters: Sociotechnical Challenges of European Migration and Border Control, a European research network examining the datafication of migration and border governance. Within DATAMIG, Working Group 1 (INVENTORY) focuses on tracing how technologies, policies, and practices travel across institutional and geopolitical contexts.

Contributions to Theme 2: “Traveling Technologies in and beyond the Nexus of Tech, Humanitarianism and Gender”, part of the DATAMIG Working Group 1 hybrid workshop taking place in Prague and online on 4–5 June 2026 are warmly invited.

This workshop explores how policies of protection are operationalised through humanitarian technologies, how they intersect with security, surveillance, and externalisation apparatuses, and how gendered constructions of vulnerability, protection, and responsibility are stabilised through data-driven classifications as technologies circulate between humanitarian agencies, states, and private providers.

Contributions addressing following questions are welcomed: How do humanitarian technologies travel, and what do they (re)configure as they move across borders, institutions and political regimes? How do feminist, sociological, and postcolonial analyses of gender and humanitarianism help to understand how gendered narratives shape the design, use, and effects of travelling humanitarian technologies? How do traveling technologies entangle humanitarian protection with punitive forms of control as they move across policy, security and racialised migration regimes?

Selected participants will be invited to submit a working paper (max. 3,000 words). The objective is to compile a collection of thematically linked papers for a special issue or edited volume.

Submission guidelines

• Abstract (max. 250 words)

• Deadline: 26 March 2026

• You should indicate whether you apply for on-site or online participation

• Email subject: COST-WG1-Prague-Theme 2

• Send to: gdini@ibei.org and datamig.wg1@gmail.com

Further information can be found in the attacked file.