[INES Announce] LaborTech Book, Paper, and Social Justice Awards

[Sarah Appelhans]

Good morning everyone!

I am forwarding along some info for the LaborTech awards season this year.
We are currently seeking nominations for new books, grad student papers,
and social justice activism. See below for details!

Sarah

****************

Labor Tech Research Network
<https://www.labortechresearchnetwork.org/> (LaborTech)
invites submissions for our *fifth* annual Book, Graduate Student Paper,
and Social Justice Awards. The deadline is *June 1.*

**About Us**
LaborTech is an interdisciplinary and transnational group of over 700
experts concerned with the intersection of technology and labor. We aim to
reframe conversations about technology and labor towards issues of power,
inequality, and social justice, and incorporate themes of feminism,
anti-racism, and transnationalism. We also seek to foster an
interdisciplinary, cross-regional, and community-oriented space for
discussion, collaboration, and empowerment. For a deeper discussion of our
mission, please visit our webpage. For a list of our previous winners,
click here.

**Call for Nominations**
As part of our mission to promote scholarship and activism towards more
equitable forms of labor and technology, LaborTech is announcing a call for
three awards -- Book, Graduate Student Paper, and Social Justice. These
will honor projects which:

   - have distinctive intellectual merit or activist impact;
   - advance the knowledge about labor and technology in the global
   society; and
   - address our core focus on labor and technology and which may
   simultaneously address feminism, anti-racism, and/or transnationalism.


**Eligibility**:  Works from all disciplines and methodologies are eligible
for nomination. Nominations are open to members and non-members of
LaborTech.  We welcome self-nominations especially, but also nominations
from publishers, colleagues, and others familiar with the projects.  We
encourage submissions from women, people of color, queer communities, and
those from the global south. LaborTech executive board members and
committee chairs, as well as books published in our Labor and Technology
series with MIT Press, are ineligible for these awards.

**Prizes**:  Winners receive a small cash award and a certificate (which we
hope to expand further in years ahead, as we are still a growing nonprofit
organization :). In addition, we offer our infrastructural supports at
LaborTech to promote visibility of your projects:  by connecting with our
globally-dispersed expert members; by making a video of winners and
distributing it both in and outside of our network to enhance public
attention and exposure; and by creating a space and opportunity for sharing
your work at out end of year virtual celebration. Winners will be announced
in December.

**Deadline and Contact**:  The deadline for submissions is *June 1, 2026.*
Send questions to awards at labortechresearchnetwork.org.  See below for
separate criteria and instructions for the various awards.


CRITERIA AND SUBMISSION DETAILS*Book Award*
Criteria:

   - Monographs only (no edited volumes or anthologies)
   - Multiple authors accepted
   - Published in the last three years (2024-26).
   - If your book is not out by the deadline for this award, please send
   proofs from the manuscript and a letter from the press editor confirmation
   publication before the end of 2026.


Submission details:
Please submit the following items in English to
awards at labortechresearchnetwork.org:

   1. An electronic version in PDF format (contact us if only print form is
   available for books)
   2. The author's contact email address
   3. A one-page nomination letter stating the significance and
   contribution of the work

***Graduate Student Paper*
Criteria:

   - Written by students currently enrolled in a graduate program or who
   have graduated in 2025
   - Single-authored pieces are preferred, but co-authored pieces will be
   accepted with the above conditions in Submission Details
   - If a co-authored piece, *the first author must be a graduate student.*
   - Papers may be published within the last three years (2024-26) or
   unpublished
   - Page length: 25-40 pages, double-spaced


Submission details:
Please submit the following items in English to
awards at labortechresearchnetwork.org.

   1. Electronic version in PDF format
   2. The author's email address
   3. A one-page nomination letter stating:
      - the significance and contribution of the work
      - when the PhD was started and, if applicable, granted
      - if the paper was published, then state when and in what journal
      - if co-authored with faculty/advisors/other PhDs, please include a
      paragraph attesting to the student's dominant role in generating
the paper
      (such as working on its theoretical components, doing the research, and
      writing it up). In addition, we ask that the cover letter is signed
      (digitally, or otherwise) by all co-authors, so that they are
aware of this
      submission.

*Social Justice Award*
Criteria:

   - Those who are interfacing with technology in the course of their
   organizing, or who are organizing against inequitable technologies, in the
   context of labor, feminism, anti-racism, transnationalism struggles.  This
   may include:
      - tech workers
      - labor organizers, whether in unions or other workers' associations
      - feminist, immigrant, community, and ethnic rights activists
      - scholar-activists.  For this, we are not looking for purely
      academic work (i.e., scholars who are studying activism), but
rather those
      who are participating in activism themselves, or who are promoting
      collaborations between activists and scholars.
      - people creating design alternatives for social justice, like
      engineers and designers
   - Open to individuals, small groups, and if appropriate, organizations
   - Focus will be on a particular campaign or project that is done with
   the aim of social justice regarding labor and/or technology.  These
   projects may be broad (such as educating the public on a social justice
   issue) or specific (such as organizing a protest for higher wages).  They
   may use a variety of strategies (e.g., art, design, social media, marches
   and strikes, policy interventions, etc.).  We'd like to honor activists
   who, through these projects, have developed novel approaches or who are
   pioneers in the fight for more equitable relations of technology and/or
   labor.


Submission details:

   - Fill out this Google Form <https://forms.gle/BirfWfuyJtPwmmDF8>:  It
   has a few short questions regarding the significance and contribution of
   your social justice activities
   - Answers to this form should be a *minimum 400 words each*, in order to
   give us enough understanding of the nominee's accomplishments.  No single
   sentence answers please!
   - Please submit all items in English.  However, if you have a submission
   in another language, contact us and we'll attempt to find a translator in
   our group.



Sarah E. Appelhans
Assistant Professor
Department of Engineering Studies
Lafayette College
Office: AEC 316
(610)330-5442
appelhas at lafayette.edu
Pronouns: she/her/hers
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