The 2026 International Conference on Education Research (ICER) invites scholars, researchers, and practitioners to critically explore what it means to engage in education research in a ‘post-’ world. The prefix ‘post-’ has become pervasive across contemporary scholarship: to name a few, postmodernism, poststructuralism, posthumanism, postcapitalism, post-Marxism, post-positivism, post-qualitative inquiry, post-phenomenology, post-Asia-as-method, postcolonial theory, postdigital theory, post-truth politics, and beyond. Rather than signaling a simple transition or an ‘after,’ these terms increasingly represent contested sites of ontology, epistemology, theoretical orientations, methodological approaches, and political possibilities.

In this moment of profound sociopolitical, technological, ecological, and epistemic struggle and transformation, ICER 2026 asks:

What does the ‘post-’ mean and signify for education research today?

Is it necessary or helpful to have the prefix ‘post-’?

How do diverse ‘post-’ frameworks reconfigure our assumptions about human, knowledge, schooling, learning, and justice?

What competing and complementary interpretations of the ‘post-’ shape our research practices, policy discourses, and pedagogical imaginaries?

What methodological innovations or disruptions emerge when working within—or against—the ‘post-’ world?

ICER 2026 offers a space to gather these multiple trajectories—affirmative, critical, speculative, and unsettling—to rethink the place and purpose of education research amid proliferating ‘post-’ paradigms. We especially welcome contributions that do not simply apply these concepts, but critically interrogate, interpret, problematize, extend, and connect them.

   Suggested Themes (not limited to)

▷ Rethinking theoretical orientations in the ‘post-’ world

Submissions that explore how “post-” paradigms—across philosophy, theory, and conceptual frameworks—reshape our understandings of humans, knowledge, learning, and education. Work may engage with shifting ontologies and epistemologies, new and intersecting theories, and the ethical or political implications of “post-” thinking.

▷  Methodological innovations and experiments

Research that examines how methods are being reimagined within “post-” research contexts, including post-qualitative, experimental, speculative, or creative approaches. We welcome discussions of methodological disruption, reconfigured notions of evidence and rigor, research subjectivity and positionality, and new possibilities for inquiry.

▷  Educational pasts, presents, and futures as continuity and rupture

Contributions that investigate how “post-” conditions transform educational practices, institutions, policies, and future-making. Topics may include shifting roles of learners, teachers, schooling, technologies, evolving pedagogies, and critical or speculative visions for the future of education.