ICIRR2026: 1st International Conference on Innovation in Rural Regions

Beschreibung

Across many parts of the world, rural regions are undergoing profound structural transformations; driven by the erosion of industrial economies, demographic change, infrastructural fragility and ecological crises. At the same time, these regions are increasingly targeted by digitalisation agendas, innovation funding and technological imaginaries. But what does innovation and design mean in these contexts? And what kinds of futures do such interventions make possible?

This conference examines the diversity of social and technical practices in rural regions and how innovations are imagined, facilitated, contested and materially shaped. Rather than treating rural areas as peripheral or deficient spaces, we approach them as complex socio-technical systems, where global challenges such as aging populations, resource depletion and institutional retreat manifest in concentrated and often under-examined ways. This conference therefore provides a space to reframe what counts as innovation in rural regions, and how design science, human-computer interaction (HCI), Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW), information and communication technology for development (ICTD), science and technology studies (STS) and regional research interleave and potentially can collaborate to analyze and shape these dynamics.