The 2026 edition of TheorizingDAI has attracted strong attention from the community, nearly doubling submissions to a total of 154. Hosted at the London School of Economics, this edition maintains its core strengths while introducing several new elements.
At the heart of the conference remain the keynote presentations, which for this edition will be delivered by Jonathan Wareham (ESADE Business & Law School), Helen Margetts (University of Oxford), and Eric Monteiro (Norwegian University of Science and Technology). These talks will be complemented by an additional keynote event: a panel co-organized by Tomislav Karačić (London School of Economics), Anne-Sophie Mayer (LMU Munich School of Management), and Elmira van den Broek (Stockholm School of Economics, House of Innovation). The panel will explore the methodological challenges of conducting comparative ethnographies, bringing together leading experts in the field, including Natalia Levina (NYU Stern School of Business), Kieran Conboy (University of Galway), Lior Zalmanson (Tel Aviv University), and Lauren Waardenburg (ESSEC Business School).
In addition to these contributions, the conference experience is further enriched by new features, such as a poster session dedicated to early-stage, creative research ideas and the introduction of four awards given to the best and most innovative works of both early-stage career scholars and established researchers.
In this event, moderators and panelists experts in qualitative methodologies will introduce comparative ethnography as a methodological approach for studying AI in organizations, guiding participants through both its analytical possibilities and its practical challenges. It promises to be a hands-on and thought-provoking session for anyone interested in fieldwork-based research on AI. During the session, the panelists will reflect on their own use of comparative methods.