What is Research? (2026) explores various natures, purposes, and roles of research across disciplines, fields, and areas. The event considers frameworks of systematic and creative inquiry, including methods, designs, analyses, discoveries, collaborations, dissemination, ethics, integrity, diversity, media/technologies, and information environments.

The thirteenth gathering delves into research in its many forms, including searching, critically investigating, and re-examining existing knowledge, as well as emerging functions and procedures in machine intelligence and computation. It highlights pluralities of research pathways, examining time-honored approaches and new ways of knowing, precedents, issues, and futures. It considers challenges and possibilities that researchers face in today’s rapidly changing world, and ways to promote ethical, inclusive, and impactful research.

Featured participants include:

• N. Katherine Hayles, Literature, Duke University and English, UCLA
• Colin Koopman, Philosophy/Digital Humanities/New Media and Culture, University of Oregon
• Vera Keller, History/European Studies, University of Oregon
• Daniel Kreiss, Information, Technology, and Public Life, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
• Liska Chan, Landscape Architecture/Environmental Futures, University of Oregon
• Mark A. Bedau, Philosophy, Reed College and Complex Systems, Portland State University
• Bernd Reiter, Classical and Modern Languages and Literatures, Texas Tech University
• Jakki Bailey, Media Studies/Immersive Media Communication, University of Oregon Portland
• Tibor Solymosi, Philosophy, Villanova University and Embodied Education, Aarhus University, Denmark

• Alexis Merculief, Prevention Science/Counseling Psychology, University of Oregon Portland
• Adell Amos, Law/Environmental and Natural Resources Law, University of Oregon

• Victor Pickard, Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania

In cooperation with the International Association for Media and Communication Research.

The event celebrates three decades of the Communication and Media Studies Doctoral Program in the School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Oregon.

Registration required. Please see the website for more details.