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Undone Computer Science 2026

Undone Computer Science

A conference to reflect on epistemological and ethical dimensions of computer science through the concept of undone science

Conference with post-proceedings

Dear Colleagues,

We invite you to submit abstracts for Undone Computer Science 2026, the second conference on undone science in computer science, to be held in Luxembourg, from 23rd to 25th of March 2026.

As researchers, we are committed to advancing computer science in a way that is both epistemologically and ethically sound. With the Undone Computer Science conference, we provide an informal venue to pause and reflect on these aspects of our scientific practices. Our goal is to bring together computer scientists from across the field, but also social scientists, philosophers and historians of science, and other scholars interested in discussing the ethical and epistemological dimensions of our work.

We welcome abstracts exploring these dimensions, and encourage submissions from a wide range of perspectives. Abstracts should be 1-3 pages, clearly outlining the main arguments and contributions of the proposed talk.

As a guiding question, we propose to apply the concept of undone science [1] to computer science. Undone science refers to questions that are left unaddressed, ignored, or unfunded for various reasons, yet demonstrably worthy of exploration. It highlights the idea that the production and dissemination of knowledge are variously influenced, leading to biases in the choice of research that is done, and eventually in a “systematic non-production of knowledge” [2].

We might want to understand, for instance, whether the way in which computer science is established eventually leaves out some potentially crucial questions and areas of investigation, and what pushes some questions or methods to be ignored whilst others might be favoured. The striking example of AI ethics indeed reminds us of some of the society-impacting case studies which originally motivated the analytical concept of undone science—including corporate influence denounced by critical voices [3], and the debate on requirements and evaluation criteria to improve research by acting on what is funded and published [4].

But undone science could also refer to the consequences of “theoretical commitments” [2], i.e., dominant paradigms, when they blind us collectively about what is worthy or not of exploration—all the while accounts of paradigm shifts in our young domain remain rare. It could refer as well to technical or methodological biases, such as when the availability of certain software or hardware at the right time determines which research idea “wins” [5], or when the haste towards automation in algorithm design leads to a loss of valuable insights compared to alternative paths where people are involved in data exploration [6].

Undone science also refers originally to questions first recognised by actors from civil society—for computer scientists, the free software movement and civil liberties organisations come to mind.

We believe that the concept of undone science can further help bring out the epistemological and ethical aspects of research in computer science, and encourage submissions from a wide range of perspectives.

Undone Computer Science is an informal peer-reviewed conference with separately reviewed post-proceedings: depending upon the eventual number and quality of submissions, we intend to follow up the conference with a call for full papers to be published in an open-access journal. (Presenting at the conference does not commit to submit a full paper; nor is it necessary to present at the conference to respond to the call for full papers.)

Potential topics

It is not necessary to be familiar with the concept of undone science in order to contribute. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

• Areas of research in computer science meeting challenges that will require or have required shifts in viewpoint; conditions responsible for certain kinds of research being over- or under-represented; reasons for a set of questions being neglected in an area.
• Epistemological questions and challenges, for instance arising from the interdisciplinary nature of computer science, or dealing with the articulations between theory and practice; investigations on the values of computer science.
• How social movements or civil society organisations (e.g. free software movement) play a role in identifying areas of research being left aside, in providing new research questions, or on the contrary in demanding that some kind of research remains undone.
• Challenges of integrating ethical and political questioning regarding social, economic, and environmental consequences of our work into the process of making “good science”. Concrete examples of questions stemming from ethical consideration being introduced to a domain (why/how), are welcome.
• How ethics codes (including for instance the ACM Code of Ethics) can be leveraged (or fail) to present some questions as being worthy of exploration; more broadly how guiding principles can be put in place to enrich the research practices in an area.
• Explorations of the influence of publishing practices within our community, and of popular research methodology and scientific writing guides provided within our fields, on the selection, execution, and dissemination of research.
• Examinations of biases and limitations present in commonly-used educational curricula (for instance leading to or stemming from a lack of diversity, be it social or methodological).
• More generally, any discussion of “systematic non-production” or non-dissemination of knowledge in a broad sense, whether in computer science in general or a specific area, whether past or present; whether due to limitations of available methodologies, blind spots of dominant paradigms, institutional and industrial biases, lack of social representation, or other factors.

We look forward to receiving your abstracts, and to an engaging and thought-provoking conference.

Bibliography

[1] D. J. Hess (2016). Undone Science: Social Movements, Mobilized Publics, and Industrial Transitions. MIT Press. ISBN 9780262529495.

[2] Frickel, S., Gibbon, S., Howard, J., Kempner, J., Ottinger, G., & Hess, D. J. (2010). Undone Science: Charting Social Movement and Civil Society Challenges to Research Agenda Setting. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 35(4): 444–473. doi:10.1177/0162243909345836

[3] According to Green, tech ethics increasingly tends to be “subsumed into corporate logics and incentives”. According to Abdalla and Abdalla, actions of “Big Tech” to influence academic and public discourse are reminiscent of the tactics of Big Tobacco:

• B. Green (2021). The Contestation of Tech Ethics: A Sociotechnical Approach to Technology Ethics in Practice. Journal of Social Computing, 2(3): 209–225. doi:10.23919/JSC.2021.0018
• M. Abdalla & M. Abdalla (2021). The Grey Hoodie Project: Big Tobacco, Big Tech, and the Threat on Academic Integrity. Proceedings of the 2021 AAAI/ACM Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society (AIES ’21), 287–297. doi:10.1145/3461702.3462563

[4] C.E.A. Prunkl, C. Ashurst, M. Anderljung et al. (2021). Institutionalizing ethics in AI through broader impact requirements. Nature Machine Intelligence, 3: 104–110. doi:10.1038/s42256-021-00298-y

[5] Sara Hooker (2021). The hardware lottery. Communications of the ACM, 64(12): 58–65. doi:10.1145/3467017

[6] Dawn Nafus (2018). Exploration or Algorithm? The Undone Science Before the Algorithms. Cultural Anthropology, 33(3): 368–374. doi:10.14506/ca33.3.03

Submission instructions

• Instructions:
  1. Abstracts should be 1-3 pages in length (excluding bibliography) and should succinctly present the key arguments and contributions of the proposed talk. The submission can contain appendices or a link to a longer version, but the point of the submission should be clear from the first three pages (reviewers are not obligated to read any further).
  2. Submissions should be uploaded to EasyChair in PDF format: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=undonecs26
  3. The conference being aimed at a wide range of research domains, authors are welcome to include a brief biography if relevant for the contribution (up to 5 lines).
  4. Authors can opt for lightweight double-blind reviewing (with the identity of the authors revealed to the reviewers after they submit their review). In this case, the submission should simply be prepared with authors and institutions omitted, and all citations in the 3rd person. The biography can still be included in an anonymised form (omitting the names of both people and institutions).
  5. Unfinished or exploratory contributions, that would benefit from discussion at the conference prior to their possible development into full papers, are welcome. There is no submission category, but authors can make it clear in the submission if they strongly prefer a short or a long presentation slot.
  6. For a paper accepted at the conference, at least one author is generally expected to present in person, but we will work to make remote presentations possible. (Feel free to inquire in advance with the organisers.)
  7. Recognising the importance of the promotion of multilingualism in science [7], we welcome submissions in multiple languages (e.g. translations of the same 1-3 pages talk proposal), provided that the submission can be reviewed from the English version alone. In addition, in special situations where a talk proposal cannot be submitted in English, please contact the chairs in advance to determine if the PC is able to review it.
• Acceptance criteria:
  1. Computer Science: we seek contributions pertaining to computer science (in a broad sense comprising both works in computer science and works on computer science),
  2. Author expertise: we expect authors to contribute in accordance with their domains of expertise, in a broad sense; for instance a contribution on ethical issues by a computer scientist can be rooted in their research practice, a contribution by a social scientist can be rooted in the study of an example or through field work; a contribution by a philosopher or historian of science can be rooted in the study of computer science as a specific domain of production of knowledge and scientific practice.
  3. Undone science: we expect that the question of undone science will inspire presentations that lead to meaningful reflections touching upon ethical or epistemological aspects of computer science in a broad sense, without requiring expertise in epistemology and ethics. For instance, a submission from a computer scientist could outline a potential ethical question, rooted in their research practice, even if its consequences in ethics cannot be fully elaborated at this point. (In doubt, feel free to inquire with the organisers about a potential topic.)
• As a general goal, the programme will leave ample time for individual presentations and for discussions. To this end, the program committee can decide to allot presentation slots of varying durations according to the extent of individual submissions and to the authors' expressed preference.
• We will endeavour to always give considerate and constructive feedback about proposed abstracts.
• Accepted abstracts will be made available online in the programme of the conference.
• PC and general chairs are not allowed to submit. Members of the PC are allowed to submit talk proposals in double-blind reviewing.
• For all submissions, usual strict rules regarding conflicts of interest apply (see the COPE guidelines or the ACM policy on conflicts of interest).

Bibliography

[7] Unesco (2003). Recommendation concerning the Promotion and Use of Multilingualism and Universal Access to Cyberspace.