Critical Drone Studies: Drones in Society, Politics, and Culture
Call for Papers
A conference hosted by the Centre for Drones and Culture
Sponsored by UK Research and Innovation (UKRI)
With the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (LCFI) and the Institute for Technology and Humanity (ITH)
Dates: Thursday 25 June - Friday 26 June 2026
Venue: Jesus College, University of Cambridge
About the Conference:
From agriculture to logistics, from journalism to delivery, from war to peacebuilding: drones continue to differently impact the ways we live, work, tell stories, relate to one another, and imagine the future. Although the history of drones dates back to at least the early twentieth century – and, by some accounts, to ballooning in the eighteenth century – it is in the early twenty-first century that their presence became widespread and their impacts transformational. Debates continue to surround more risky drone developments, such as drones’ integration into autonomous, AI-driven warfare, and their illicit use for drugs and weapons delivery into prisons. However, alternative deployments show promise, including unmanned delivery of medicines to remote geographies, surveying of humanitarian crises and environmental disasters, and the creation of fresh visual idioms in photography, cinematography, gaming, and other forms of entertainment. Although the types of drones used in these spaces can be quite different, they often involve imaginaries of situational awareness, technological autonomy, and “distant intimacy” – of humans being physically apart from another person, object, or milieu while robots remain relatively close, at times even enabling affective feelings and cognitive impressions of access and intimacy.
While drone studies has tended to treat the use of drones in these spaces separately, the ambition of this conference is to engage in boundary work which moves the field towards a more heterogeneous, as well as normative, understanding of drones in society, politics, and culture: towards a critical drone studies that acknowledges both how individual motivations and creativity shape what a drone is and does, and how such engagements are also influenced by institutions and power. To this end, this is a reflexively interdisciplinary conference that encourages exploratory perspectives on drone pasts, presents, and futures, with a focus on probing the logics and narratives underpinning drone development, proliferation, and acceptance. Some of the questions the Centre for Drones and Culture has been asking in this regard include:
How and/or by whom is drone power and drone violence made legitimate or illegitimate?
How might advances in AI, machine learning, and sensor fusion transform drones from tools of remote operation into semi-autonomous actors, and what new forms of responsibility, accountability, or even co-agency does this create between humans and machines?
What would a drone ecosystem look like if designed primarily for public good (e.g., in health care, climate monitoring, or cultural preservation) rather than military or commercial imperatives? What technological architectures and governance models would be required to enable this shift?
In what ways could drones reconfigure human perception, storytelling, and embodiment, not only through aerial perspectives in media and art, but also by reshaping how we experience distance, intimacy, and presence in everyday life?
How can critical tools like crip and queer theory—theories concerned with championing alternative understandings of bodies and relationality—expand how the drone is theorized as “unmanned” and "autonomous"?
If we imagine futures where drones are deeply embedded in infrastructures (from urban logistics to border control), how do we guard against reinforcing inequities or epistemic injustices? Could new forms of design, transparency, or participatory governance create more just and plural drone futures?
Call for Submissions:
We invite papers to join this dialogue, and we look forward to facilitating an open and constructive conference related to the social, cultural, and political dimensions of drones and autonomous systems. Research on broad topics related but not limited to the following are very welcome:
Drone wars: algorithmic and AI-enabled violence; drones as justified or non-justified forms of organized / disorganized violence; “new” drone wars, drone-on-drone warfare, “kamikaze” drones, loitering munitions
Drones and civil liberties: policing; surveillance; predictive politics; sousveillance; protest; regulatory politics; atmospheric commons
Drone humanitarianism: “Drones for Good”; drones in rescue and disaster relief; drone use by international non-governmental organizations; drones and human rights accountability
Drone ecologies: climate-human-technology relationships; conservation; biomimetics; ecocide; existential risk; environmental monitoring
Drones and political economy: commercial drone applications; drone bases, supply chains, logistics, materialities; drones, infrastructural politics, and the internet of things
Drone labour: lived experiences involving drones; drone praxis (including ethnographies and autoethnographies) that unsettle or reconfigure drone theorizations; drone technology and constructions of human ability / disability
Drone aesthetics: artistic, speculative, and experimental imaginaries regarding unmanned and/or autonomous artefacts; popular drone culture including photography, marketing, filmmaking, drone racing, light shows
Contributions from the humanities, social sciences, and beyond are very welcome, as are contributions from those working outside of academic institutions, including practitioner communities, non-profit organizations, government and policy-making organizations, think tanks, as well as artists and creators.
Details for Proposals:
There are three formats for presentations; please indicate which one you are applying for on the online application.
Individual presentations (max. 15 minutes): please submit an abstract of no longer than 300 words, along with a short biography of no longer than 50 words.
Panel presentations (max. 3 x 15 minutes): please submit a panel abstract of no longer than 500 words, along with the names and institutions of proposed participants, with individual biographies of no longer than 50 words each.
Creative Showcase presentations: There is limited room for research-grounded creative contributions as part of the conference programming. Please submit an artist’s statement of no longer than 200 words, a short biography of no longer than 50 words, and a representative image of your creative submission. At this time, we can only accommodate screen-based / touchscreen-based outputs which we will display throughout the conference (screens will be provided). You may show a film, for instance, an interactive piece, or images of a physical artwork or performance that is relevant to the conference theme. You are encouraged to attend the conference event but you may apply to show your work remotely.
Only one proposal will be accepted for the research paper presentation (either individual or panel presentation). You may apply for the Creative Showcase in addition to the paper presentation, or on its own (if you're submitting to both, please create two separate proposals).
This is an in-person event funded by a UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship (MR/W010429/1).
For queries about the conference, please email drones@lcfi.cam.ac.uk