March 16-17 at Paderborn University

4th TRR 318 Conference: Scaffolding Social XAI 

16.03.2027 and 17.03.2027 in Paderborn 

Deadline for submissions: 1.11.2026

The interdisciplinary Collaborative Research Center TRR 318 Constructing Explainability explores the ways in which explanations are created, negotiated, and made meaningful across contexts. Previous editions of the conference have addressed different dimensions of explanation, including understanding and contextualising.

The 4th TRR 318 Conference turns to a perspective that has recently gained increasing attention in explainability research: Social XAI (sXAI), which conceptualises explainability as a social practice. Accordingly, the topic of the upcoming conference is “Scaffolding Social XAI.”

By scaffolding, we refer to the social and communicative supports that enable critical engagement with ideas, assumptions, technologies, and tools. This also encompasses the ability to critically interrogate AI-generated outputs in practice (e.g., in educational contexts such as assessment or diagnosis), including emerging forms of XAI literacy as a situated competence.

We invite contributions from a wide range of disciplines that address explainability as a social phenomenon. This may include work on, (a) explanatory practices in dyadic interaction (b) explainability and interpretability in AI systems, or (c) explanation processes embedded in institutional and organisational settings.
 

Topics

Possible contributions include, but are not limited to:

• explainability as a social and interactional practice

• Social XAI and critical perspectives on AI explainability

• everyday explanations in dyadic or group interaction

• explainability, interpretability, and transparency in human–AI or human–robot interaction

• the role of explanation in institutional, educational, clinical, or workplace settings

• critical engagement with explanatory tools, technologies, and design practices

• XAI literacy and critical use of AI in professional practices (e.g., educational assessment, diagnosis, decision-making)

• theoretical, empirical, and methodological approaches to studying explanation across disciplines
   

Format of submissions:

Please submit an extended abstract with the following information:

• 1–2 pages, including references

• title

• author name(s), affiliation(s), and email address(es)

• 4–5 keywords

Please use this template for your submission and submit your extended abstract here until 01.11.2026. 

Notifications of acceptance: 30.11.2026.

The accepted papers will be published in the Proceedings of the 4th TRR 318 Conference.
 

Formats of presentations:

Presentations might be presented in a 20-minute oral presentation or as a poster. Please indicate your preferred format within the submission.

Should you have any queries, please contact us at conference@trr318.uni-paderborn.de.