08/01/2026
The Fourth International Conference of the journal Scuola Democratica will be held at “Sapienza” University of Rome, Italy, from 1 to 4 September 2026. The Conference is devoted to examining the vital interplay between learning and democracy, two essential pillars for building societies that are just, inclusive, and sustainable. The Conference theme – Learning for Democracy / Democracy for Learning – not only reaffirms the enduring significance of democratic values but also calls for their critical rethinking and their concrete realization in everyday educational and social practices.
In a global landscape marked by democratic backsliding, widening inequalities, and accelerated digital transformation, it has become imperative to reconsider how education and democracy can be reconnected in order to cultivate conscious, critical, and actively engaged citizens. The Conference brings together Italian and international scholars and researchers in a broad, multidisciplinary conversation aimed at reimagining education and training as instruments of emancipation and as living practices of democratic citizenship—rooted in the present, yet responsibly oriented toward the future.
The Conference hosts more than 150 confirmed panels, organized into 11 thematic streams, and aims to foster a broad and multifaceted dialogue. This dialogue ranges from efforts to move beyond Eurocentric perspectives in pursuit of epistemic justice, to feminist and gender-based analyses, to rethinking education as a practice of global and sustainable citizenship. Particular attention is devoted to the digital dimension and artificial intelligence: nurturing active and responsible citizenship today requires cultivating critical awareness in the use of technology, ensuring that it serves as a tool of empowerment rather than of fragmentation and isolation.
Panel L .05 – Living together, Co-Governing, Becoming: More-than-Human Futures for Democracy in Education
Within this broad framework, several panels engage with pressing questions concerning the transformation of democratic education in the face of digitalization, ecological crisis, and changing forms of governance. Within this context, Panel L .05 – Living together, Co-Governing, Becoming: More-than-Human Futures for Democracy in Education, chaired by Paolo Landri (National Research Council of Italy – Institute for Research on Innovation and Services for Development – Cnr Iriss) and Francesca Peruzzo (University of Birmingham), directly addresses these challenges by interrogating the democratic implications of contemporary transformations in education governance.
Starting from posthuman and more-than-human perspectives, the panel challenges anthropocentric accounts of education governance, highlighting how governing processes increasingly emerge from complex assemblages of human actors, digital platforms, algorithms, data infrastructures, and ecological materialities. Particular attention is devoted to how AI, datafication, platformisation, and digital infrastructures are reshaping democratic learning, civic participation, and ethical responsibility in education.
The panel examines how more-than-human governance redistributes agency, authority, and responsibility in hybrid educational environments, where humans do not simply govern technologies and nonhuman entities but increasingly co-govern with them. The discussion will address: (1) the political ecologies of digital governance, in which public–private infrastructures and Big EdTech actors shape the conditions of educational democracy; (2) the affective atmospheres generated by algorithmic systems, rankings, and AI-driven pedagogies, and their consequences for participation, consent, and resistance; and (3) the ambivalent symbioses that emerge among learners, educators, technologies, and planetary resources—symbioses that may entrench extractivist and inequitable logics or foster convivial and sustainable futures.
Mobilising post-anthropocentric and new materialist analytics, the panel reframes democratic education as a more-than-human project embedded in contested sociotechnical and ecological assemblages. It argues that sustaining democracy in education requires not a defence of human exceptionalism, but a politics of coexistence, care, and response-ability across human and nonhuman agents. This reorientation is positioned as both analytically urgent and politically generative for reimagining education’s democratic futures.
The call for abstracts opened on 20 December 2025 and will close on 28 February 2026.
Useful links
Conference website: https://www.scuolademocratica-conference.net
Submit your abstract: https://www.scuolademocratica-conference.net/submit-your-abstract-3/
Discover the Conference panel sessions: https://www.scuolademocratica-conference.net/panel-sessions-2/
About Scuola Democratica
Scuola Democratica first appeared in Italy in the 1970s, with the aim of supporting teachers engaged in pedagogical experimentation and in debates on educational policy. Over time, it has evolved into an international academic journal, while retaining its Italian name as a marker of its intellectual and historical roots. Since 2010, the subtitle Learning for Democracy has accompanied the journal, highlighting the wide and complex range of issues it has consistently explored and expanded over the years, at the intersection of education, democracy, and social justice.
After more than fifteen years, this subtitle is now brought to the forefront as the guiding theme of the Fourth International Conference—Learning for Democracy / Democracy for Learning. This theme reflects the conceptual compass that has shaped the journal’s trajectory in recent decades and continues to orient its critical engagement with contemporary educational and democratic challenges.
Per informazioni:
Paolo Landri
CNR - Istituto di Ricerca su Innovazione e Servizi per lo Sviluppo