Research Tracks

Hypertext research offers essential methods for structuring, tracing, and interpreting machine-mediated information flows. We invite contributions that deepen hypertext theory and systems design in order to address contemporary forms of algorithmic mediation – not as general AI studies, but as rigorous extensions of hypertext’s historical commitment to scalable knowledge management and human-centred augmentation.

Hypertext has transformed authoring, reading, and publishing by disrupting, subverting, or complementing book and media culture and practice. In an era when authorship is increasingly hybrid and machine-assisted, hypertext research provides essential tools for preserving legibility, provenance, and interpretive focus across evolving reading and publishing ecosystems. Submissions may focus on specific case studies or theories of new emerging practices, rhetorical analyses, or methodological reflections that take inspiration from fields such as book history, digital humanities and/or media studies or the study of literature. Hypertext as a paradigm can ensure that digital writing cultures remain participatory, accountable, and meaningfully structured.

Technical hypertext research continues to provide robust architectures for organising, traversing, and preserving large and heterogeneous datasets. As textual corpora grow exponentially and machine-generated materials permeate every domain, hypertext systems offer versioning, annotation, provenance tracking, and long-term knowledge stewardship. We welcome contributions that further these capabilities through rigorous engineering, formal modelling, and system innovation—advancing hypertext as a foundational technology for the next generation of data-intensive applications.

Hypertext has always been both a technology and a philosophy for engaging with network textuality: from Bush’s epistemology of associative reasoning to Engelbart’s augmentation paradigm to Nelson’s rethinking of text. This track invites research that critically extends these foundational ideas to address the conceptual, ethical, and experiential challenges of contemporary text ecologies shaped by automation and scale. We encourage submissions that deepen hypertext theory itself – its models, histories, and future trajectories – and treat hypertext as a methodological anchor in the contemporary media landscape and the production of cultural objects.

At its core, hypertext research has examined how linking structures shape communities, collaboration, and the circulation of knowledge. Social media platforms and algorithmic agents increasingly govern how these social connections are formed and interpreted. The insights of hypertext research help design communicative systems that support transparency, diversity, and collective intelligence. We welcome submissions that advance hypertext-centred understandings of community dynamics and sociotechnical infrastructures, ensuring that hypertext remains a framework and a paradigm for studying and improving digital culture and scholarship.