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Original CFP | Featured Speakers | Registration | Student Travel Grants

The University of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

June 25–28, 2026

The annual meeting of the Media Ecology Association provides an opportunity for scholars, artists, professionals, educators, and students to exchange experiences and ideas in a friendly environment.

We invite proposals for papers and panels related to the field of media ecology.

Our conference theme — crossing [out] borders in our global village — is offered as a generative and open cue. Anyone attending the conference will have crossed some sort of border, and many of us do research that considers the power of relationality and purpose of differentiating. Figuratively, many of us cross borders by blending disciplinary interests or research methods. We chose our theme to suggest that all avenues are open, all topics welcome for review. We look forward to hosting you and convening a vibrant MEA Conference. Marshall McLuhan often spoke of many ways borders were falling — of our world as increasingly “without walls,” in a reapplication of Andre Gide’s original coining. Playing with the multiple divisions cutting through the country, he referred to Canada as “a borderline case.” He saw danger in a wide-open global village but would likely have considered current calls for actual walls and strengthening of national borders as “rear view mirror thinking” — ineffective, change-resistant thinking.

Winnipeg welcomes you as the hometown of Marshall McLuhan, a founding figure of the MEA. There will be an opportunity for you to join a pre-convention tour on June 24 (hosted by the Marshall McLuhan Initiative) to visit several sites connected to McLuhan, such as his family home on Gertrude Avenue.

Wednesday, June 24
1:00–7:30 p.m.
Hosted by the McLuhan Initiative’s Howard R. Engel and Esther Juce
$25 USD

Proposed Schedule

1:00 p.m. - Pick-up by bus at the University of Winnipeg.
1:45 p.m. - Painting by René Cera in the Elizabeth Dafoe Library, U. of Manitoba Campus.
2:15 p.m. - Plaque at Marshall McLuhan Hall, U. of Manitoba Students’ Union.
3:15 p.m. - Bronze bust of Marshall McLuhan at the Winnipeg Citizens’ Hall of Fame at the Assiniboine Park (near The Leaf).
4:15 p.m. - “The Medium is the Message” mural in the Atrium of the Princess Street Campus of Red River Polytech, 160 Princess Street.
5:00 p.m. - The Mural of McLuhan at Kelvin High School, 155 Kingsway.
5:45 p.m. - 507 Gertrude Avenue, Marshall McLuhan’s childhood home.
6:00 p.m. - Reception with drinks and hors d’oeuvres. Interested parties may walk 15 minutes to the Osborne Bridge to see the “McLuhan Lived Here” engraving installation. Tours of the inside of 507 Gertrude in small groups, conditions permitting.
7:30 p.m. - Bus back to the University of Winnipeg.

Convention registrants have the option to sign up for this when registering for the convention below. Additional details will be provided as it gets closer to June. Please direct any questions to the tour organizers at themarshallmcluhaninitiative@gmail.com.

Call for Papers

Submissions for paper and session proposals (no longer than 250 words) were due by November 1, 2025 January 15, 2026 to MEA2026@uwinnipeg.ca. Each participant was asked to include title, abstract and contact information. A maximum of two submissions per author were accepted.

Submission guidelines for manuscripts for authors who wish to be considered for the Top Paper or the Linda Elson Top Student Paper award:

  1. Manuscripts should be 4,000–6,000 words (approximately 15–25 double-spaced pages).
  2. Include a cover page with your institutional affiliation and other contact information.
  3. Include an abstract (250-word maximum).
  4. Submit paper proposal by the regular November 1, 2025 deadline, then submit full manuscript by January 1, 2026 February 1, 2026. Please indicate the award you are seeking.

Featured Speakers


Derrick de Kerckhove

Derrick de Kerckhove was born in Belgium in 1944 and naturalized Canadian in 1967. He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto in 1974 and a post-graduate doctorate in Sociology of Art from the University of Tours in 1979. He taught at the University of Toronto from 1967 to 2012 and is Professor Emeritus in the Department of French. Associated with Marshall McLuhan's Centre for Culture and Technology since 1968, he worked with Marshall McLuhan for a decade as his assistant, translator, and co-author. He became Director of the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology from 1983 to 2008. Several of his dozen books were published in as many languages, including Brainframes: Technology, Mind and Business (1991), The Skin of Culture (1995), Connected Intelligence (1997), The Architecture of Intelligence (2001), and The Quantum Ecology, in collaboration with Stefano Calzati (MIT Press, 2024). His latest book, L’uomo quantistico (Rai libri, 2025) extends and develops his contributions in the previous one. From 2004 to 2014 he was a professor in the sociology faculty at the Università Federico II in Naples and was guest professor at the Design School of the Polytechnic Institute of Milano (2016–25) and director of research at the Interdisciplinary Institute on the Internet at the Open University of Catalonia in Barcelona. He lives in Rome, where he is scientific director of the monthly magazine, Media Duemila, and of the Osservatorio Tuttimedia.


Wendy Hui Kyong Chun

Wendy Hui Kyong Chun is Simon Fraser University’s Canada 150 Research Chair in New Media, Professor in the School of Communication, and Director of the Digital Democracies Institute. At the Institute, she leads the Mellon-funded Data Fluencies Project, which combines the interpretative traditions of the arts and humanities with critical work in the STEM to express, imagine, and create innovative engagements with (and resistances to) artificial intelligence and our data-filled world.

She has studied both Systems Design Engineering and English Literature, which she combines and mutates in her research on digital media. She is author many books, including: Control and Freedom: Power and Paranoia in the Age of Fiber Optics (MIT, 2006), Programmed Visions: Software and Memory (MIT 2011), Updating to Remain the Same: Habitual New Media (MIT 2016), and Discriminating Data: Correlation, Neighborhoods, and the New Politics of Recognition (2021, MIT Press). She has been Professor and Chair of the Department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University, where she worked for almost two decades. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, an International Fellow of the British Academy and has also held fellowships from: the Guggenheim, ACLS, American Academy of Berlin, the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. 

Registration

Early registration prices are as follows:

  • Regular member: $160
  • Student member: $60
  • Non-member: $260
  • Non-member student: $90

Early registration prices are good until March 15, 2026. After that, regular member registration is $170 and student member registration is $70.

Convention registration entitles you to attend all convention panels, plenaries, and special sessions. The cost to attend the awards banquet, however, is $50. That’s a separate fee this year.

All prices are in U.S. dollars. Sustaining and Institutional members don’t have to pay for the convention separately, but they still must register for it.

Register by clicking the button below:

Register now

All convention participants and attendees are encouraged to join the MEA.

Hotels and housing options wil be announced closer to the convention.

Student Travel Grants

The MEA is pleased, once again, to offer a limited number of travel grants to students — undergraduate and graduate — seeking financial assistance in attending the convention. Those interested in applying should complete this form. Student travel grant applications are due by March 15, 2026.

Contact

Please stay tuned for more information. In the meantime, if you have questions, please contact convention organizer Jaqueline McLeod Rogers at j.mcleod-rogers@uwinnipeg.ca. She and members of the Department of Rhetoric, Writing and Communications are hosting the convention.

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