Towards Sustainable Digital Futures: a two-day symposium

Towards sustainable digital futures, a two-day symposium

Over the past decades, digitalisation and sustainability have emerged as two of the most significant global trends, yet they have largely developed independently. Digitalisation is proposed as a solution to address global sustainability challenges such as climate change, environmental pollution, and biodiversity loss (United Nations 2018; Dwivedi et al. 2022). Nevertheless, technologies such as AI are partial and deceptive solutions to the planetary crises if their sustainability is not addressed.

Alarming figures from scientific research have highlighted the detrimental environmental effects of digitalisation and datafication. The environmental impacts of digitalisation are significant and growing, with rising electricity consumption, water usage, and emissions from devices, networks, and data centers (Gelenbe, 2023; Lange et al., 2023; Li et al., 2023). Moreover, the extraction of critical minerals for digital devices as well as planned obsolescence and poor recycling cause severe ecological harm, particularly in the Global South (Lange et al., 2023).

Although societies want digital technologies to serve the social good, there has been far more focus on environmental harms of digital technologies than sustainable alternatives. In this symposium, we ask what a sustainable digital society looks like and how we get there. What kind of research is needed to make the digital future more sustainable? 

The interdisciplinary symposium will include paper presentations, a workshop, and keynote talk. 

When: 14-15 May 2025

Where: The Edge, 34 Endcliffe Crescent, Sheffield, S10 3ED (University of Sheffield campus). 

Participation fee: £120, or £90 for PhD students. The fee covers symposium attendance, refreshments, lunches and an evening meal on the first day. Travel and accommodation are not covered.

For questions and more information: please contact minna.vigren@lut.fi.

The symposium is a collaboration between the ESRC Digital Good Network and the Imagining Sustainable Digital Futures project (Research Council of Finland, 2022-2025).