Call for papers: AJE Summer Conference 2026 – Stories of Resilience In Journalism Education

Event: AJE 2026 Annual Summer Conference

Dates: Thursday, June 25, and Friday, June 26, 2026

Theme: Stories of Resilience in Journalism Education

Venue: City St Georges University, London

Call for papers:

After decades of expansion, journalism education is facing a steep correction. Student numbers are falling, faculties are merging, and some long-standing journalism programmes are closing altogether. There are days when the HE sector seems full of doom. At the same time, the news media itself continues to contract more regional titles are shutting their newsrooms, and redundancies have become part of the deathly ticktock of most major media companies.

And yet many of us in the world of journalism education remain resolute in our commitment to our discipline, and are finding reasons to be hopeful, even cheerful. Press Gazette has reported that three-quarters of journalism graduates were working in journalism-related roles. Specialist courses such as sports journalism are not only surviving but thriving.

Postgraduate degrees have also remained resilient, strengthened sometimes by the continued arrival of overseas students. Meanwhile, partnerships with industry – integrating professional practice ever more deeply into our programmes – remain an important route to survival and renewal.

Innovation, imagination, and the forging of bold new partnerships are just some of the stories of resilience rippling through a sector that has been busy reinventing itself.

This year’s AJE UK Annual Conference welcomes proposals for papers related to resilience in journalism education and journalism. Possible themes include, but are not limited to:

• AI and adaptability: how journalism educators are integrating – or resisting – generative AI within the curriculum while maintaining ethical standards;

• Managing trauma: how the sector is teaching students how to report our complex world without compromising their own mental health – or that of their audiences;

• The success of diversity: strategies for supporting students from marginalised backgrounds who face exceptional, and often unacknowledged, hurdles in the classroom and the newsroom;

• Reversing the long, slow death of local news: how journalism schools are helping to fill the ‘news desert’ gap – and the resilience required to sustain community reporting;

• Cross-border resilience: comparing how journalism educators in the ‘global south’ and the ‘global north’ navigate censorship, political pressure, and resource scarcity;

• Transference of skills: how journalism courses are adapting to rapid changes across the wider media communications sectors and exploring the opportunities offered for journalism graduates to work in a range of fields where journalism skills can be transferred across a range of professional roles, occupations and practices;

• Building professional resilience: how do we build our own resilience as journalism educators in the changing and challenging landscape of higher education;

• Pedagogical approaches to build resilience and sustainability: how our teaching, assessment and curriculum development is meeting the changing needs of our stakeholders;

• Research-based practice: how research underpins journalism education and journalism; new approaches to research-based work; preparing for REF 29; sharing your practice and your work.

Submission guidelines:

Presentation abstracts will be peer-reviewed. Please submit an abstract of no more than 300 words, that includes a brief biographical note, your institutional affiliation (where relevant), and your email address. Please attach as a document to your email. These should be submitted at assjrned@gmail.com by April 17, 2026 at 4.30pm.