NCOBPS 2027 Annual Meeting Information & Call For Papers

Algorithms and Black Politics

Democratic Rights, and the Struggle for Self-Determination in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

March 17-20, 2027

HOTEL/LODGING
The Georgian Terrace
659 Peachtree NE, Atlanta, Georgia 30308

Conference Information

THEME

Algorithms and Black Politics: Democratic Rights, and the Struggle for Self-Determination in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Black political and economic and social progress remain under attack in the twenty-first century. Civic and human rights struggles continue to damage Black folk physically, mentally, and financially. The legal architecture of Black political power is being dismantled. Supreme Court rulings such as Shelby County v. Holder (2013) and Louisiana v. Callais (2026) have unleashed a wave of mid-decade redistricting across the South—in Louisiana, Tennessee, South Carolina, Alabama, and Florida—as legislatures redraw congressional boundaries in ways that threaten to thin the ranks of Black voters and weaken Black representation at every level of government. Alongside this redistricting, voter-roll purges, polling-place closures, and restrictive identification and registration laws continue to raise the cost of participation. Added to these usual tools of oppression and repressive social behavior is the misuse of artificial intelligence (AI). Public policies, campaigns, and other political avenues are driven by algorithms.

Voter suppression, intimidation, and violence are increasingly informed by AI projections of images that perpetuate false narratives about the body politic that serve to keep marginalized communities divided. Beyond the ballot, we confront broader assaults on due process, civil-rights enforcement, the freedom to teach and to research, and the institutions designed to hold power accountable. Resistance to data centers that pollute the environment, placing the health of residents in Black neighborhoods in jeopardy, is a new fight for environmental justice. The hard-won guarantees of full and equal citizenship are, once again, openly contested. The attacks on the Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of birthright citizenship affect native-born and naturalized Black citizens as well as Black immigrants and refugees. It is in this moment that the National Conference of Black Political Scientists convenes. True to our founding charge to study, enhance, and promote the political aspirations of people of African descent in the United States and throughout the world, we invite scholarship that confronts these intertwined crises with rigor, imagination, and moral clarity. We seek papers, panels, and roundtables that treat the algorithm and the ballot not as separate concerns but as two faces of a single struggle over power, participation, and self-determination. We welcome work from across the methodological and theoretical spectrum and from every generation of scholars, and we are equally committed to the knowledge carried by those organizing on the ground. To that end, we especially encourage participation from community-based organizations, advocates, and practitioners, alongside undergraduate and graduate students. This is a moment that demands all of us.

SUBMISSIONS DUE: NOVEMBER  1, 2026

Conference Co-Chairs

Dorian Crosby, Spelman College
Teri F. Platt, Clark Atlanta University

Send questions to: ncobps2027@gmail.com