Race and Media Conference

A major international conference exploring how race is constructed, represented and contested in media today, bringing together leading scholars across disciplines and methodologies

This conference will run from 9am on Wednesday 22 April 2026 to 6pm on Thursday 23 April.

How we live with racial difference has long been a defining issue for modern societies, but recent years have brought this question into even sharper focus. We are witnessing a striking contradiction: while media content around the world has become increasingly superdiverse, this has occurred alongside the resurgence of the far right in ostensibly stable democratic societies, and includes the distressing everyday live-streaming of racial violence. The growing presence of generative AI further complicates this terrain, raising urgent questions about the politics of race-making in algorithmic and automated cultures. Scholars have long shown how media serve as powerful sites for the dissemination of racist ideologies - but also as spaces for resistance and transformation. Today, the representation of race across news, entertainment, and social media offers a rich landscape for interrogating how racial hierarchy is constructed and contested in contemporary life.  

This international conference will bring together researchers producing fresh, new insights working in the field of race and media research. We are inviting papers that explore this topic in myriad ways, adopting a range of theoretical and methodological approaches, though with a shared criticality. We welcome work that re-examines the theories and concepts that have defined our sub-field and/or explores new frameworks and paradigms for research. We are interested in how ‘race’ as an analytic is being put to work outside the Anglo context, and in societies that seek to bury their racialised histories. We encourage contributions that analyse rising ethnonationalism and nativism in ‘Global South’/’Global Majority’ media spheres. This conference aims to bring a global perspective to the study of race and media, tracing the filiations and resonances of racist and far right discourses across ‘liberal’ and illiberal, ‘democratic’ and authoritarian media landscapes and political contexts.  

We welcome papers related to any of the following topics: 

• Intersectional approaches to race and media 

• Media, racism and authoritarianism 

• Race and generative AI / algorithmic media cultures 

• The politics of race in popular culture 

• Mediating colonial violence and genocide 

• Race and production studies 

• Reactionary media 

• Digital race/racism 

• Anti-racist media activism 

• Postcolonial nationalism, race and media 

• Affect, emotion, race and media 

• Racial capitalism and media in the Global South 

• Race in influencer culture and promotional culture 

• Caste, racialisation and media 

• Mediating urban multiculture 

• Diasporic and transnational media cultures 

• Intersections of race and religion in media 

• ‘Decolonising’ media studies 

• Race, media and migration. 

Confirmed keynote speaker: 

Professor Herman Gray - Emeritus Professor of Sociology at UC Santa Cruz 
(More to follow) 

Key dates: 

• 19th September, 2025: Deadline for proposal submissions 

• 17th October, 2025: Notification of decisions; registration opens 

• 16th January, 2026: Full programme released. 

Submitting proposals 

We welcome both paper and panel proposals for this conference.  

Paper proposals should be for 15-minute presentations. Submitted abstracts should be no more than 300 words (excluding references). 

If you wish to propose a panel, please note the following stipulations: 

• Panel proposals should include a panel overview (max. 300 words), outlining the title, synopsis, and chair details, as well as the abstracts for each contributor (no more than 250 words each). 

• Panels usually consist of three to four papers and a chair. 

• Panels should aim to reflect the diversity of the profession. 

Please submit all proposals via email: raceandmedia@leeds.ac.uk 

Practice-based presentations 

We are also interested in receiving submissions based around creative practice. If you are interested in putting together a session around a practice-based presentation then please email us at raceandmedia@leeds.ac.uk. 

Registration fees 

The cost of attendance is £180 for salaried academics and £80 for students/low waged. This covers lunches, coffee breaks and a drinks reception.  

Bursaries 

We aim to offer a limited number of travel subsidies to support postgraduate student participation in this event. Postgraduate students interested in applying for these subsidies should please note this when submitting. 

Conference organising committee

Maitrayee Basu, Israel Campos, Helen Kim, Cindy Ma, Dibyadyuti Roy, Anamik Saha, Sara Takafori 

For all enquiries please email: raceandmedia@leeds.ac.uk