Interdisciplinary Human-AI Interaction Conference

Date: 27 November 2026

Register by: 18 November 2026

Submit an abstract by: 16 October 2026

Location: C0.02 & C0.08 Zeeman Building, University of Warwick

Call for ContributionsLink opens in a new window

Artificial intelligence (AI) is now being used more and more in everyday life, which affects the ways in which people work, learn, communicate, create, make decisions and understand the world surrounding them. This has led to more complicated kinds of interaction between humans and AI and has raised questions concerning the wider institutional and social implications of these technologies. Since AI systems have become more capable and have been incorporated into human activities, research into human-AI interaction has increasingly shifted away from seeing AI mainly as a passive technological tool to now focusing on more interactive, participatory and relational types of human-AI engagement.

This also means that as there are now sustained and emotionally significant ways in which humans interact with AI, questions arise as to whether and in what way concepts previously used to describe human-human relationships, such as attachment, intimacy, and reciprocity, can be applied and redefined in order to understand interactions and relationships between humans and AI. Given these recent developments, we are inviting submissions that examine human-AI interaction as a dynamic process which is situated within wider social, institutional, cultural, and material contexts, with a special emphasis on relational and reflexive perspectives.

By taking a relational approach, one highlights the ways in which AI becomes part of and contributes to the broader relationships that involve individuals, communities, organisations, institutions, and technologies. A reflexive approach, on the other hand, underscores the mutual processes by which humans and AI systems influence, respond to, and alter one another over time as a result of their interaction. Seeing human-AI interaction from these two interwoven perspectives invites attention to the temporal and evolving nature of human-AI relationships, including how they develop, are maintained, negotiated, disrupted, or transformed over time.

Bringing relationality and reflexivity together, this conference asks what we can learn from understanding human-AI interaction as an ongoing process of relational formation and transformation, rather than simply in terms of human design, use, or assessment of technology. We welcome contributions that look into how human-AI relationships emerge, evolve, are negotiated, resisted, maintained or transformed in educational, professional, organisational, social, creative, and everyday contexts. We also encourage contributions that explore how human-AI relationships intersect with human relationships and sociotechnical contexts, and that critically consider both the possibilities and limits of reciprocity, agency, and relationality in human-AI interaction.

The event is funded by the Digital, Data Science & AI Spotlight.Link opens in a new window

Potential themes for contributions

Contributions drawing on discourse and interactional data are particularly welcome.

Possible areas of interest include, but are not limited to:

• the temporal and evolving nature of human-AI relationships;
• trust, authority, agency, power, equity, responsibility, and the negotiation of expertise in human-AI interaction;
• resistance, appropriation, adaptation, and repair as processes through which human-AI relationships are shaped and transformed;
• collaboration, dependency, care, attachment, intimacy, and affective relations with AI;
• asymmetry, reciprocity, mutuality, and the reconceptualisation of human relational concepts in human-AI interaction;
• how interaction with AI may reshape human practices, identities, relationships, and forms of knowing;
• how human practices, values, norms, and institutional contexts shape AI development, deployment, and use;
• how AI may reshape relationships between humans, communities, organisations, and institutions;
• how sustained interaction with AI may reshape users’ preferences, expectations, practices, and ways of relating to others;
• methodological approaches for examining the formation and transformation of human-AI relationships and the reciprocal processes through which humans and AI may influence one another through interaction;

We welcome theoretical, methodological, and empirical contributions from diverse disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives, including education, linguistics, discourse studies, sociology, humanities, communication, human-computer interaction, psychology, and related fields. Researchers at all career stages are warmly invited to contribute, with postgraduate and early-career researchers especially encouraged to participate.

Submission of Abstract

We invite contributions for 10-minute talks at this conference. Speakers are encouraged to share work at any stage of development, including ongoing projects, as the aim of the conference is to foster dynamic discussions and collaboration.

Abstracts should be a maximum of 300 words (including references, with the aim, methods, previous research/theory, and (expected) results of the study clearly stated)

• Submission deadline: 16 October 2026
• Notification of acceptance: 23 October 2026

Submit here!

Registration

• Registration fee: Free
• Registration deadline: 18 November 2026

Register here!

https://forms.cloud.microsoft/e/VVCbndJJaw?origin=lprLinkLink opens in a new window

Panel: 'How is interacting with AI changing us, and how, in turn, are we shaping what AI becomes?'

TBC

Contact us

For enquiries, please email Hii@warwick.ac.ukLink opens in a new window.