12-13.2.2026 | Oslo, Norway (Pilestredet campus, room TBA)
Across Europe and beyond, welfare systems are increasingly governed through digital infrastructures: automated decision-making, predictive analytics, and large-scale data collection. These developments, often framed as efficiency gains or fraud prevention, have in practice intensified conditionality, expanded surveillance, and deepened the exclusion of society’s most vulnerable members. Scholars and advocates have cautioned against a “digital welfare dystopia” where rights, dignity, and equity are sacrificed in the name of modernisation. At the same time, to re-imagine better futures we must first understand the digital welfare state as it exists today: its technologies, its politics, its consequences for claimants and frontline workers.
This two-day workshop turns its attention to both the present and the future of digital welfare. We ask not only how digitalisation is reshaping welfare governance and experience, but also how it might be reconfigured to serve democratic values, social justice, and human flourishing. What would it take to design welfare technologies that empower rather than
control, that foster solidarity instead of suspicion, and that open new spaces for participation and care?
We invite critical, creative, and speculative contributions that balance analysis with imagination. The aim is to create a space for interdisciplinary dialogue across social science, humanities, criminology, law, and design, bringing together those who study what is with those who imagine what could be.
Guiding Questions:
- How is the digital welfare state currently being implemented across different contexts,
and with what consequences for claimants, frontline workers, and institutions?
- What forms of surveillance and monitoring are embedded in welfare technologies, and
how do they shape experiences of inclusion, exclusion, and conditionality?
- To what extent could welfare surveillance be repurposed a tool of care rather than
control?
- How do digital welfare systems affect marginalized groups differently (e.g. migrants,
people with disabilities, ethnic minorities, or low-income households)?
- What conceptual tools can help us reimagine welfare beyond logics of efficiency,
surveillance, and conditionality?
- How might digital infrastructures be repurposed to strengthen equity, participation, and trust?
- What role could design, activism, or policy innovation play in building more
democratic digital welfare futures?
- How can lived experiences of welfare claimants and frontline workers inspire both
critique and alternative imaginaries?
- What lessons can be drawn from national variations, grassroots practices, or
experimental projects that challenge the dominant trajectory?
Invited Plenary Speakers
We are delighted to welcome Professor Anne Kaun (Södertörn University), whose research spans media theory, algorithmic culture, automation, and civic participation, and Professor Morgan Currie (University of Edinburgh), whose work focuses on automated social services, data justice, and participatory mapping. Their contributions will anchor our conversations on
both the lived realities and possible futures of the digital welfare state.
Practical Information
- Date & Venue: 12-13 February 2026, Oslo, Pillestredet campus (exact room TBA).
- Abstract submission deadline: 31 October 2025.
- Notification of acceptance: 15 November 2025.
- Abstract length: 300–400 words. Please include your name, institutional affiliation,
and contact details.
Participation in the workshop is free of charge for the invited participants. Participants are expected to cover their own travel expenses. A very small number of travel grants will be available for early career researchers without institutional funding. If interested in the travel grant, please specify so explicitly in your application.
Submission: Please send abstracts to Marijke Roosen maroo2167@oslomet.no and Lior Volinz Lior.Volinz@inst-krim.si while mentioning ‘The Digital Welfare State workshop’ in the subject line.