What UNESCO’s 2026 Call for AI Ethics Research Is Trying to Solve
UNESCO and the AI and Society Institute at École normale supérieure (ENS-PSL) in Paris have opened a call for papers on the ethics of artificial intelligence. The announcement targets researchers who completed a PhD within the past five years. It builds on the UNESCO 2021 Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial Intelligence and is designed to promote emerging research, interdisciplinary exchange, and stronger links between scholarship, public policy and practice.
The call invites extended abstracts of 800 to 1,000 words, excluding references. Submissions can come from any relevant discipline and any geographic region. The deadline is 30 October 2026. Authors of selected proposals will be invited to present their work at a one-day academic event at ENS in Paris on 10 December 2026. That event is expected to bring together emerging scholars, established researchers and representatives of academic institutions for thematic discussions and expert feedback.
The list of suggested topics is broad. It covers fairness, accountability and transparency; human rights and AI; awareness and AI ethics literacy; and multistakeholder and adaptive governance. Other areas include social inclusion, gender equality, vulnerable or underrepresented groups, and the ethical dimensions of AI in public policy, research and innovation. The call also mentions environment, sustainability and climate action; youth, mental health and health; AI ethics and the Sustainable Development Goals; ethics of AI in STEM and basic sciences; and frontier technologies.
The scope shows that AI ethics now includes governance, sustainability, cultural knowledge systems and the social effects of technology, not just algorithmic bias. The program also signals that answers are expected to come from many disciplines, not only from a single technical field.
The reference to the 2021 UNESCO Recommendation gives the project a shared foundation. It is the document the organisers use to span different national contexts, academic traditions and policy systems. Supporting early-career researchers in this way matters because those scholars are the ones likely to carry this work into future standards, rules and public debate. The call gives them a direct route to expert feedback and a public forum, with a short timeline from submission to event.