SICT 2026 abstract

Connecting Visions

The ICT sector plays a contradictory role in shaping sustainable futures. While technologies promise optimisation, dematerialisation, and access to knowledge, are also driving economic division, extractivism, rebound effects, disinformation, and surveillance. These ambivalent positions of ICT act as both a contributor to and a potential mitigator of the overlapping ecological and social crises we face.

We aim to explore these tensions across planetary and societal boundaries - from the environmental cost of digital infrastructure to the erosion of public trust and democratic processes. We’ll look at how technological optimism can delay climate action and how narratives of open source and AI are being co-opted to sustain business-as-usual.

These complex issues require interdisciplinary thinking, blending different approaches and connecting visions.

Building Resilient Futures

The SustainableICT Winter School is an interdisciplinary event that emphasises learning and doing. It includes lectures, panels and interactive workshops. Throughout the week, academics, politicians, artists, and activists will come together to analyse and challenge the usage and effects of ICT across the globe.

We will start by examining the past, how ICT was built and integrated in the world around us. We will then dissect the present relationship between technology, politics, and the economy. Finally, we will end the week by drawing the line between ICT and social injustice, as well exploring ways of dealing with the consequences - to build a more resilient future.

We invite people from diverse communities, academic fields, the industry and arts to come together for a five-day English language winter school from the 26th to the 30th of January 2026, held at Université Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels, Belgium.