Call for Papers: The People’s Political Economy

A one day conference presented by the Political Economy and Algorithms Collective, as part of our series on Technology and Democracy: Perspectives from Political Economy

The Political Economy and Algorithms Collective is hosting a one-day conference on May 2 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. This conference will bring together researchers and organizers that are investigating the political economy of algorithms and computing, with the goals of identifying how we might bridge technology-related movements and struggles, and what the role of theory and the intellectual in a liberatory movement can/should be.

We are soliciting submissions (in the form of position papers) with the intent to invite at least twelve presenters. Attendees may present a lightning talk or participate in a panel in conversation with others. All accepted position papers will be published on our website: computing.capital.

Suggested Topics and Themes

Submission topics are open-ended but should generally forward a political economic perspective in critical studies of computing and emphasize historical and materialist approaches. Below are suggested topics/themes:

For a panel on data center resistance (in conversation with the local resistance movement in Southeast Michigan)

  • The political economy of data centers, including the role of the state and corporate actors in advancing the rapid push for data centers
  • studies of environmental and labor exploitation
  • tactics for resistance and report-outs from resistance efforts
  • lessons from history that we could adopt for the current moment

Examples:

  • Papaevangelou, Charis, and Eugenia Siapera. “State, platform capitalism and infrastructural power: Microsoft’s data centres in Greece 2.0.” Platforms & Society 2 (2025): 29768624251323325.
  • Quinn, Adam. “Computer Capitalism: Labor, Health, and Environment in the US Computer Industry.” (2025)

Analyses of sites of production, value creation, and the role of technology in shaping social relations of exploitation and expropriation

Examples:

  • Parsons, Amanda, and Salomé Viljoen. “Valuing social data.” Columbia Law Review 124.4 (2024): 993-1080.
  • Karen EC Levy. 2015. The contexts of control: Information, power, and truck-driving work. The Information Society 31, 2 (2015), 160–174.
  • Ramesh, Divya, et al. “How platform-user power relations shape algorithmic accountability: A case study of instant loan platforms and financially stressed users in India.” Proceedings of the 2022 ACM conference on fairness, accountability, and transparency. 2022.

Efforts to organize resistance with or in spite of technology

Examples:

  • Sum, Cella M., Caroline Shi, and Sarah E. Fox. “‘It’s Always a Losing Game’: How Workers Understand and Resist Surveillance Technologies on the Job.” Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction 9.2 (2025): 1-32.
  • Miceli, Milagros, et al. “Methodological Considerations for Centering Workers’ Epistemic Authority in AI Research.” Proceedings of the AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society. Vol. 8. No. 2. 2025.
  • Erin McElroy. 2023. DIS/POSSESSORY DATA POLITICS: From Tenant Screening to Anti-Eviction Organizing. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 47, 1 (2023), 54–70.

Explorations of the role of finance, money, and ruling class interests in the development of technology.

Examples:

  • Sadowski, Jathan. The Mechanic and the Luddite: A Ruthless Criticism of Technology and Capitalism. Univ of California Press, 2025.
  • Tandon, Udayan, et al. “Can Smartness Fail? The Charisma of High Tech as Class Politics.” Proceedings of the 2025 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference. 2025.
  • Wolf, Christine T., Mariam Asad, and Lynn S. Dombrowski. “Designing within capitalism.” Proceedings of the 2022 ACM Designing Interactive Systems Conference. 2022.
  • Gururaja, Sireesh, et al. “To build our future, we must know our past: Contextualizing paradigm shifts in natural language processing.” Proceedings of the 2023 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing. 2023.

This is not an exhaustive list; we welcome submissions on topics that are not listed above but are in the spirit of this CFP.

Format

2 page limit (without citations): position paper, extended abstract, etc. We prefer that authors use the ACM small template.

Submission process

Upload your submission here. Questions can be directed to political-economy-and-algorithms-requests at umich.edu.

Deadline

UPDATE! Submissions will be accepted on a rolling basis until Feb 15, 11:59PM.

Attending and Logistics

Date: Saturday, May 2, 2026

Location: (Venue TBD), University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States

Cost: No attendance or registration fees

Travel: Nearest airport is DTW (25 miles, accessible by bus), nearest train station is Ann Arbor (2 miles)

Financial Support: Funds are available for round-trip travel to Ann Arbor from the US and Canada for accepted presenters. Organizers will be in contact with presenters to arrange travel and lodging plans.