Summer Symposium 2026:
Create, Critique, Collaborate: Technology and Democracy
Location: Saulkrasti, Latvia, Dates 24-31 July 2026
Nordic Summer University (NSU), Nordic and Baltic Network for Interdisciplinary Study and Research (Defending Academic Freedom Since 1950 )
Short summary:
Please consider submitting an abstract or an artistic submission to our summer symposium called:
“Create, Critique, Collaborate: Technology and Democracy”
It is part of the Nordic Summer University (NSU) and our summer events are in a different location every year. It has done this since 1950, and in the summer all the symposiums (circles) meet in a single venue (where we all stay, and share meals).
There will be space for talks, installations and performances. There will be excursions, cultural events, and there is a dedicated children circle.
Note that there is a grant program for those without institutional funding. Please apply before Thursday the 14th of April for grants.
Abstracts were due on the 8th of May, and the extended deadline is the 15th of may. See the longer and more detailed description below for the details.
Feel free to contact us if you are wondering how you would fit in and please send a short letter about your contribution and a bio to eric.deibel@nsuweb.org. It would be appreciated if you can “cc” the other coordinators: georgios.diapoulis@chalmers.se, and talya.deibel@maastrichtuniversity.nl.
Details below in the long abstract
Full description (includes pricing):
As part of the study circle/symposium series “Cybioses: art, critique and technology”, we are pleased to announce a call for abstracts and artistic submissions for our summer session, which has as its theme:
“Create, Critique, Collaborate: Technology and Democracy”
See below for information on costs and the grants that are available. Abstracts are due on Friday the 8th of May (grant requests on the 14th of April).
We invite scholars, artists, students, technologists, and other professionals working or writing on future technologies to take part in the winter symposium of our study circle Cybioses: art, critique and technology, part of the Nordic Summer University (NSU), a migratory non-hierarchical group of international researchers that has existed for 75 years. Since its inception, the primary aim of NSU has been to provide a forum for experimentation and cross-disciplinary collaboration, welcoming members both from within and outside of universities and other institutions.
1. Cybioses: art, technology and critique (what is it?)
The study circle has existed for nine years and its name ‘Cybiosis’ (pl. cybioses), is a neologism, based on ‘cybernetic’, ‘symbiosis’, and ‘bio’. It embodies the new technological modes of living that we aim to investigate. Cybioses is meant, from the start, as a speculative metaphor. The term is intended to support an imagination of the ambivalent relation between:
- (cybernetic) systems of symbioses and inclusion, and
- the relentless drive to commodify life forms and extend the networks of technological control.
This has been the orientation of our circle for a long time; new is the explicit focus on forms of collaboration as integral to technological culture. Our participants are typically immersed in their own ways in technoscientific realities and together it there is an “engaged diversity” from where to explore the ambivalence of modern life the heavily disciplined and formalized interdisciplinary and participatory spaces of technology development.
After all, we invariably participate in nearly inescapable process of commodification and control, while exploring collaboration remains integral to the ability to challenge, to think, to discuss, to make plans and so on. Hence the theme for the summer session, which is
2. Create, Critique, Collaborate: Technology and Democracy
This theme is intended to amplify what we do. Our group has lasted and thrived because of our effort to create a space wherein wherein each participant is able to be in the center, for some time, and show the fascination with technological developments, and this typically includes some type of concern over the future of democracy. This is greatly helped by the format of the NSU, which keeps the group open to new influences, and people, ideas, forms of creativity, improvisation and the self-organization of a lively environment.
Examples include talks, discussions, readings as well as to installations, artifacts are exhibited, and various kinds of performances. Live coders and modular synthesizers are frequent, but the shape the creativity takes might be quite different, as it depends on the dynamic of the meeting, time, location, and there is no rush. After all, the NSU will be there, and Cybioses is not anyone’s “deliverable” – it exists because its participants are there to form strong connections and create their own forms of collaboration.
This year we are particularly interested in modes of collaboration that put the spotlight on overly narrow and passive conceptions of participation in the context of flat ideas about the role of innovation, invention in democratic society. We would be delighted with contributions that disrupt the idea of the arts and critical thought as nothing more than instrumental, serviceable and powerless in the context of technology development and its hold over society and democracy.
We do this often: many previous contributions draw attention to the brave new worlds of speculative AI, of social media, of bio- and neurotechnology, and so on. Consequently, a critique of collaboration is in order, how it is everywhere, and yet its promise is under pressure. Is there an inevitable transformation into something that limits freedom, equality, and it detached from ideas about citizenship. Or, is it, perhaps, the case that we need more collaboration: more creative work at larger scales, more experiments across disciplinary lines, and a society wherein there is more space for unconventional types of agencies, critique, art, invention, and any other kinds of creative exploration?
Perhaps there is reason to be critical, perhaps we are getting “collaboration” and participation wrong, and, perhaps, getting it right is of geopolitical importance. After all, if we don’t collaborate, there is little reason to change how we are failing to resist powerful and technologically driven ideas about growth, that fuel environmental collapse and extinction of countless species in the context of human-made climate change. Perhaps, that resistance begins by exploring what new and old types of creativity, change, and renewal are still possible. Perhaps, the future of democracy even depends on it.
Who should consider joining
We are interested in reflecting on creativity, critique and collaboration in terms of underlying ideas and narratives that come from different fields, explicitly including artistic practices, philosophical niche topics, inventors and natural scientists willing to share their experiences and more.
The topic is defined broadly on purpose: this is our working method, and the goal is to deepen and renew our collaboration with artists, hackers, designers, technologists, theorists, and others. We hope once again to find contributors with experimental approaches to presenting and collaborating. We welcome long and short presentations, textual (read out) and performative, theory-based, and practical, with artistic and aesthetic aims. The end-result is (deliberately) different every time, as we (deliberately) explore the contributions from a broad range of disciplinary and cross-disciplinary perspectives.
Topics that relate strongly to the key works of the symposium are encouraged, such as:
the overlap between democracy and technology
creative agency in art, technology and society
creativity as integral to critique / critique as integral to creativity
creativity and the human mind
the future of creativity, critique and/or collaboration
creativity and critique in performance and improvisation
reflection in/through/on practice
intellectual histories of creativity and/or collaboration
the political economies of collaborative models and participation
creativity and surveillance
synergy between fields of innovation
the rules of collaboration and its relation to democracy (e.g. ethics, law, policy, government)
responsible and irresponsible innovation (as a policy model, in specific fields, as a democratic value)
Other topics that fit the profile are welcome and perspectives that we welcome include (but are not limited to):
ethical and philosophical perspectives
science, technology, and engineering
science and technology studies
the arts and humanities
political economy and theoretical critique
cybernetic thought and information theory
hard/soft/wetware experiments
critical examinations of neoliberal and authoritarian systems
a focus on alternatives, including failed experimentation
literature or film studies, including scifi.
Feel free to contact us if you are wondering how you would fit in, or if your topic is not on this list. The same applies to the type of contributions. We encourage participation from scholars, artists, students, technologists, and other professionals. Experimental approaches to presenting and collaborating are encouraged. We will do our best to facilitate installations and performances, as well as video installations, and exhibitions.
Submission and contact
Please send a short letter about your contribution and a bio to eric.deibel@nsuweb.org. It would be appreciated if you can “cc” the other coordinators: georgios.diapoulis@chalmers.se, and talya.deibel@maastrichtuniversity.nl.
The deadline for abstracts was the 8th of May and has been extended for the 15th of may. This should include:
1. A written proposal (max. 350 words) with a title and descriptive subtitle. This text should include your presentation proposal, its format, its duration, facilities you need (e.g., space, technical equipment), and an explanation of what motives you to join.
2. A short bio (max. 200 words)
Please send a single PDF file with your name in its title.
This Summer Session we have space for a few grants. Submission are due on the 14th of April. Please include a short reasoning in your submission. Please read the dedicated website on the grants:
Finally, it might be possible to attend the symposium without presenting. In this case, please just e-mail us a short bio.
You will be sent an acknowledgment that your grant application and/or abstract has been received. You will be notified of whether it has been accepted within a week after the deadline. You will contacted about your grant request with information about its duration. The preliminary program will be announced as soon as payments have been processed.
Registration fees:
Cost include meals. There is a dedicated children circle.
- 1250 euros Institutional price/any room type
- 900 euros Institutional price PhD/any room type
- 950 euros Single room
- 700 euros Bed in double room
- 1000 euros Double room 1 adult 1 child
- 1200 euros Family room 1 adult 2 children
- 1800 euros Family room 2 adults 2 children
- 1500 euros Family room 2 adults 1 child
- 500 euros Camping
More information: https://www.nsuweb.org/summer-session-2026-essentials-to-know/
Arrival: TBD
Departure: TBD
About NSU
The Nordic Summer University (NSU) (www.nsuweb.org) is a Nordic network for research and interdisciplinary studies. NSU is a nomadic, academic institution, which organizes workshop-seminars across disciplinary and national borders. Since it was established in 1950, Nordic Summer University has organized forums for cultural and intellectual debate in the Nordic and Baltic region, involving students, academics, politicians, and intellectuals from this region and beyond.
Decisions about the content and the organizational form of the NSU lay with its participants. The backbone of the activities in the NSU consists of its thematic study circles. In the study circles researchers, students, and professionals from different backgrounds collaborate in scholarly investigations distributed regularly in summer and winter symposia during a three-year period.
For more information and to sign up to the NSU newsletter go to: www.nsuweb.org
We look forward to your submissions.
Eric Deibel,
Researcher at the Radboud University in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. He is associated with the Donders insitute for cognition, and a group working on “meaningful human control” over AI. His current project is about smart housing. Formerly he was associated with UCD and Maynooth university, and for a long time he taught STS at Bilkent as a lecturer and an assistant professor. He has coordinated the circle for over 5 years.
Georgios Diapoulis
Senior Lecturer in Interaction Design, Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Gothenburg / Chalmers University of Technology. This is his first year coordinating the circle but he is a long time participant.
Talya Deibel
Assistant professor at Maastricht University, specialization health law and ethics. She has coordinated the circle for 2 years.
Previous symposia
Our previous topics were “Cultures of Creativity and Critique” (Winter Session 2026, Pitea, Sweden), “Creativity under surveillance” (Summer session 2025, Finland), “Creative Machines” (Winter Session 2025, Copenhagen), “Speculative Technologies and Future Frictions” (Summer 2024, Denmark), “Information crisis” (Winter 2024, Vilnius, “What a waste” (summer 2023, Lithuania), and “Slow futures” (winter 2023, Brussels). Previous years’ themes further have included “the future imperfect”, “Human technology Futures”, “Improvisation and Technology” and more.