Conferenza

Digital intimacies, young people and everyday life

International conference

25-26 September 2025
University of Padova
Deadline: 14 April 2025

Call for papers

The digital space is gradually contributing to shaping the concept of intimacy, transforming what was once considered the exclusive domain of the private sphere into a continuous flow of data, desires, and connections. From social media to dating apps, from digital tools for self-expression to algorithmic imaginaries, intimate relationships are constantly redefined in the digital environment in increasingly complex and multifaceted ways. For young people, digital media has become an essential part of their everyday lives, as they are the fastest group in taking up, transforming and abandoning new technologies. In their daily media practices, young people establish, maintain, and perform relationships while negotiating the need for privacy with the desire for visibility. Digital platforms act as affective architectures, creating new marketplaces where emotions, identities, and relationships are continuously profiled and monetized.

As Laurent Berlant (1998) noted, these “contradictory desires” are intrinsic to the intimacy of daily life. By welcoming the ambiguities and paradoxes of intimacy, connection and identity, the field of digital intimacies contends with the constant interplay between public and private in everyday life. How is intimacy experienced in a context where everything seems mediated through algorithms and regimes of visibility? What new forms of affection, sexuality, and bonds emerge in the digital daily lives of young people, and what risks do these transformations entail? How do young people draw on, negotiate and transform representations and models of intimate relationships?

This conference invites researchers to investigate the multiple ways in which young people interact with, negotiate, and reinvent intimacy in a progressively digitalized world. Intimacy is not limited to romantic or sexual relationships, but includes a broader spectrum of dimensions, such as friendships, family bonds, personal identity, and emotional well-being. We welcome approaches that move beyond and challenge heteronormative, Western-centric notions of intimacy, inviting broader and more inclusive conceptualizations.

The goal of the conference is to create a critical discussion space to reflect on the opportunities, challenges, and contradictions inherent in digital intimacies, exploring its intersections with the social, cultural, and technological dimensions of daily life. While the digital offers new possibilities for connections, self-expression, and identity construction, it simultaneously raises questions about privacy, surveillance, commodification, and inequalities.

While the main focus of the conference lies within media, cultural, and gender studies—particularly concerning young people, digital intimacies, and everyday life—interdisciplinary perspectives are welcome.

We invite presentations on the following topics, but not limited to:

Dating, relationships, and intimate connections
Sexual expressions and practices, including sexting and pornography
Gender identities, performances and representations
LGBTQIA+ activism and communities
Intersectional perspectives on digital intimacies
Friendship and networks of care
Constant connection and digital disconnection in interpersonal communication
Bodies, health, and sex education
Online and offline abuse in intimate relationships
Datification and commodification of intimacy
Platforms, algorithms, and digital monitoring, including intimate partner surveillance and location tracking
Intimate citizenship and rights
Methodological and ethical challenges in doing research with young people

Abstract Submission

Please submit your 350-400 words abstract in English, including contact details before 14 April 2025. Abstracts will be reviewed via a blind peer review process.

Please submit your abstract via Google Forms: https://forms.gle/cmmfHvcbfh5ZzjYo6

Schedule

25 February: Call for papers opens
14 April: Deadline for abstract submissions
10 May: Notification of acceptance/rejection
5 June: Registration opens
30 June: Deadline for conference registration

Scientific Committee

Cosimo Marco Scarcelli, Francesca Comunello, Lorenza Parisi, Valentina Fedele, Sergio Villanueva Baselga, Despina Chronaki, Sander De Ridder, Manolo Farci, Francesca Ieracitano, Jamie Hakim, Maria Josè Masanet, Flaminia Musella, Maria Francesca Murru, Paola Panarese, Geraldina Roberti, Mariacristina Sciannamblo.