Join us in Mainz for Geomedia 2027
From 29 September to 1 October 2027, the 7th International Geomedia Conference will take place at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, bringing together scholars from geography, media and communication studies and related fields.
Under the theme Postdigital Resiliences, Geomedia 2027 explores how media and digital technologies have become embedded in everyday life and place-making, and how it shapes experiences of uncertainty and vulnerability. We invite contributions that examine these developments from a wide range of geographical and media perspectives.
We look forward to welcoming you to Mainz in 2027!
After decades of research on digitality, scholars across the humanities and social sciences increasingly diagnose and explore contemporary life as shaped by a ‘postdigital’ condition. The postdigital does not imply a move beyond the digital. Instead, it points to a condition in which digital technologies are no longer perceived as novel, but have become so deeply woven into the material, social and spatial fabrics of everyday experiences and placemaking that a clear separation between digital and analogue life increasingly loses its analytical grounding.
At the same time, the postdigital draws attention to practices of intentional disconnection and attempts to create temporary ‘offline’ niches within deeply mediatised worlds. Such practices do not necessarily mark an escape from the digital; they can also be understood as negotiations of a condition in which digital infrastructures, practices, and imaginaries have become pervasive and ordinary, and often recede from view.
The postdigital thus foregrounds hybrid entanglements of the analogue and the digital, the embodied and the algorithmic, the situated and the planetary, opening new ways of understanding how media shape spatial relations, lived environments and emerging futures, including new aesthetic orders, spatial reconfigurations, and practices of resistance and disconnection.
Submit your Abstract (available soon)
We are delighted to welcome our confirmed keynote speakers to Geomedia 2027. Their talks will approach the conference theme of Postdigital Resiliences from different academic perspectives.
PhD student workshop on Post-Digital Geographies:
On Wednesday morning (September 29th), there will be a PhD student workshop on Post-Digital Geographies, organized by Karin Fast and André Jansson, both from the Centre for Geomedia Studies at Karlstad University, Sweden.
In this workshop, we will provide a theoretical and empirically grounded view of the relations between current post-digital trends and the social production of space. Along with conceptual discussions, the workshop will utilize creative and interactive methods to reflect on post-digital geographies beyond digital absence and disconnection, notably in terms of morality, taste, and material culture. More information about the workshop and how to participate will be posted in early 2027.
Welcome to Mainz!
Located on the Rhine in the Rhine-Main region, Mainz is the capital of Rhineland-Palatinate and just a short train ride from Frankfurt Airport. It is also the birthplace of Johannes Gutenberg, whose development of printing with movable type transformed the circulation of knowledge and laid important foundations for modern media communication.
His legacy remains visible throughout the city.Geomedia 2027 will take place at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU), one of Germany’s large comprehensive universities. Around 30,000 students from 120 countries study at JGU. Most university institutes and facilities are located on a single campus, within easy reach of Mainz city centre. The conference is hosted by the Institute of Geography in close collaboration with the Centre for Geomedia Studies at Karlstad University (Sweden).
Its research and teaching cover a broad range of geographical perspectives, including work on human and cultural geography, as well as digital cultures. The Institute is also home to the international M.A. programme Human Geography: Globalisation, Media and Culture. The programme places particular emphasis on the role of media in contemporary geographical processes and combines critical human-geographical research with practical engagement with different media formats. We look forward to welcoming the Geomedia community to Mainz in September 2027!
The Geomedia 2027 is organized by the Institute of Geography at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz. The conference format was established at Karlstad University.