Workshop at CSCW’25: October 18 2025, Bergen, Norway

Start: 9:00 at Grieghallen (main conference venue), level 3, room Halling (see maps)

End: 17:30

Followed by a social dinner in Bergen.

The workshop has passed. Want to keep the conversation going? Email [email protected] to be added to Slack.

Call for participation

We invite academics, industry professionals, policymakers, freelance workers, civic actors, economists, and other interested parties to participate in our upcoming workshop, "CSCW Contributions to Critical Futures of Work", hosted at CSCW conference in Bergen, Norway.

Two versions of futures cones. A. The conventional uni-vocal view, in which a person or group has decided what is “preposterous,” unlikely, and probable, and in which the uni-vocal author(s) propose a single speculative alternative which they have named “preferred” (e.g., Dunne and Raby, 2024, Voros, 2017). B. This workshop’s poly-vocal view, in which many future visions co-exist in imagination and discourse (e.g., Carey et al., 2021-2022, Lindley et al., 2019 - see also Bellini et al., 2018, Kim et al., 2023, Rifat et al., 2023). Note that some of the future visions (i.e., future visions 4 and 5) may exist outside of the imaginable limits of the conventional approach.

Workshop goals

The workshop will explore innovative ways to integrate diverse and often marginalized voices into the design and implementation of work-related technologies. We are particularly interested in contributions that address:

The impact of recent technologies and configurations on future labor practices. What responses can the CSCSW community make to the new pressures to commoditize work and to silence workers, including AI displacements of human labor?
Feminist, post-colonial, post-growth critiques of current work technologies. How do these frameworks support us in resisting the dominant imaginaries? How can we ground our future visions in the CSCW traditions of pluralistic inquiry?
Strategies for inclusively designing future work and workplaces. Acknowledging that inequalities (patriarchy, racism, colonialism) are not overcome, how do we protect the discriminated workers from the power abuses? </aside>

Participation

We invite the participants to co-construct the workshop agenda. We encourage proposals for presentations, panel discussions, and interactive sessions that align with the theme of critical computing for the future of work.

In addition, we welcome alternative forms of submissions, such as pictorials, art pieces, design fictions, glossaries, research proposals, multimedia presentations, and other creative media that express ideas and perspectives on the topic. Proposals should aim to highlight the role of diverse voices in shaping technological futures and may focus on empirical research, theoretical frameworks, or innovative artistic expressions. We plan to publish the accepted contributions on the workshop website. We will guide the participants to achieve tangible outcomes as a result of the workshop.

CSCW requires that at least one author of each accepted submission attend the workshop and register for at least one day of the conference.

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To participate - CfP extended!

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Please submit an abstract of up to 500 words or your proposed research, artistic, or multimedia contribution by ~~Aug 11~~ Aug 24: [email protected]

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Organizers

Alina Lushnikova, University of Luxembourg

Michael Muller, IBM Research

Shaowen Bardzell, Georgia Institute of Technology

Tobi Li, University of Notre Dame

Saiph Savage, Northeastern University & Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM)

Contact

Email: [email protected]