ECA Warsaw 2025

5th European Conference on Argumentation – ECA 2025

Argumentation in the Digital Society

Tuesday, September 23 – Friday, September 26, 2025, Warsaw, Poland

Warsaw University of Technology, Faculty of Administration and Social Sciences

The European Conference on Argumentation (ECA) is a biennial pan-European initiative aiming to consolidate and advance research on argumentation. After four successful editions, in Lisbon in 2015, Fribourg in 2017, Groningen in 2019 and Rome in 2022, ECA will be hosted in 2025 by the Warsaw University of Technology, in Warsaw, Poland. We aim to attract scholars on argumentation worldwide from various disciplines, dealing with a range of themes and adopting a variety of approaches.

Website: www.ecargument.org
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ecargument/
Contact: info.ecargument@gmail.com

Keynote speakers

Dawn Archer, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, UK
Przemysław Biecek, Warsaw University of Technology, Warsaw, PL
Jean Goodwin, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, US
Miriam Metzger, University of California, Santa Barbara, US

Argumentation in the Digital Society

The special theme of this conference is Argumentation in the Digital Society. The main objective of the conference is to identify the key research areas related to the dynamics of change and development in today’s digitised society. Social media bring with them many new communication opportunities and open up a range of exciting challenges related to new forms of argumentation with unprecedented reach and associated social impact. They may also generate phenomena that can negatively affect the rationality and the reasonableness of argumentative discourse.  Particularly noteworthy among these is the phenomenon of polarisation, which is of considerable importance for the distancing of social groups (including social media user communities) from each other, as well as phenomena such as the spread of fake news, offensive language, and hate speech. These and other phenomena in digitised communication may constitute a block to the development of rational and reasonable activity in argumentative discourse. Hence there is a need to develop the theoretical tools of argumentation and related disciplines that allow discussion and argument to be founded on trust, charity, and goodwill. The conference aims to explore these topics and ensure a high-quality exchange of research results.

Submissions outside of the scope of the special theme Argumentation in the Digital Society are also accepted. We invite submissions from all sub-disciplines of argumentation, on all relevant topics, and employing a variety of methods and approaches. These may include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • argumentative design
  • argumentation schemes and patterns: analogy, practical argument, conduction, …
  • argumentation in special contexts: finance, medicine, law, policy-making, academy, (social) media, …
  • artificial arguers (generative AI)
  • controversy and disagreement
  • critical thinking
  • dialogue logic, empirical logic, informal logic, …
  • discourse analysis
  • empirical research on argumentation
  • fallacies
  • normative pragmatics
  • education and pedagogy
  • philosophy of argument
  • rhetoric and argumentation
  • strategic manoeuvring
  • virtues
  • visual and multimodal argumentation
ECA Frans H. van Eemeren Prize

ECA awards the Frans van Eemeren Prize for an Outstanding Student Paper sponsored by Springer: € 500 cash and additional € 500 in books from Springer’s catalogue. ECA organisers strongly encourage student contributions. To access the final stage of the evaluation for the prize, they must jointly fulfil the following conditions:

  1. Be accepted for presentation at the conference, either as a regular or long paper. Regardless of its submission format, papers invited to the final stage of the prize will have to be in the 7000-8000 word range to be considered.
  2. Have a student (undergraduate or graduate) as the first author, who must be registered to the conference before submitting the final version of their paper, and has not defended their PhD before 1 January 2025).
  3. Not have any non-student scholar as co-author.

If the abstract is accepted, full papers should be submitted by 15 May 2025. The winner will be announced and the prize awarded at the end of ECA Warsaw 2025, during the conference dinner. The President of the Jury, Prof. Sally Jackson (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) will present the prize. In addition to that, the winning author will be invited to publish the paper in Argumentation, pending successful peer-reviewing procedures applying to all papers published in the journal. Further details on the Frans van Eemeren Prize, including the winners of past editions, are available on the ECA website.

Abstract submission

Submissions will open on 20 January 2025 via the Easy Chair platform (details TBA on our website).

1) Long paper, with a commentator

Submit an abstract of 1000 to 1500 words, ready for double-blind reviewing. Accepted papers are submitted before the conference (see “important dates” below) and are assigned a commentator. Authors receive presentation slots of 35 min. For publication purposes, long papers should not exceed 7000 words.

2) Regular paper, without a commentator

Submit a regular abstract of 300 to 500 words, ready for double-blind reviewing. Accepted regular papers are submitted after the conference, and no commentator will be assigned. Authors receive presentation slots of 25 min. For publication purposes, regular papers should not exceed 5000 words.

3) Thematic panel or symposium

Each thematic panel/symposium is expected to be related to the theme “Argumentation in the Digital Society.”

Panels should allow presentations by 3 to 5 speakers with a total duration ranging from 90 to 150 minutes. Panels may include a panel respondent (panel organizer(s) or someone invited by the panel organizer(s)). Panel proposals are submitted by the panel organizer and should be prepared for double-blind review. Proposals shall include the following: a title, a description of the panel and its connection to the conference theme (300-500 words), the titles and abstracts of all contributions to the panel (300-500 words each) and the name of the respondent (if applicable). For publication purposes panel/symposium papers may not exceed 5000 words (incl. references and footnotes). Please note that all abstracts in the panel/symposium should also be individually submitted by their authors as ‘Regular papers’. When submitting these individual contributions, authors must include the sentence “My paper is part of the thematic panel/symposium…” followed by the title of the symposium at the very beginning of the paper abstract.

4) Poster

Submit a regular abstract (300 – 500 words) ready for double-blind reviewing. Posters will neither be assigned a commentator nor published. Posters shall be in printed format (A1 size).

Submission policy
  • Only one paper as first author, except when the author also submits a panel contribution.
  • Double-blind peer review for quality and relevance by the Scientific Committee.
ECA summer school

The ECA 2025 summer school organized by Barbara Konat and Leonard Kupś, (Faculty of Psychology and Cognitive Sciences) will take place at Adam Mickiewicz University, in Poznań, Poland, before the ECA conference, from 17th to 20th September 2025. Poznań is a 2.5-hour train ride from Warsaw and also has its own airport. The summer school allows Early Career Researchers to explore current methods in the empirical analysis of natural language argumentation. This includes a variety of topics such as formal and informal logic, erotetic logic, computational approaches, conversation and discourse analysis, and experimental methods in psychology with a strong focus on practical, hands-on analysis. Participants are encouraged to submit a 2-5 page description of their graduate research project, which will be presented during the first day (Student Session). Additionally, participants will have the chance to consult with tutors during one-to-one mentoring sessions on the final day. Applications are evaluated by the Organizing Committee on a first-come first-served basis. We anticipate hosting approximately 15-20 participants. Details about staff, submission and fees are to be announced.

Important dates

Submission deadlines

  • From January 20, 2025: submission open
  • March 1, 2025: submission deadline
  • April 1, 2025: notifications of acceptance or rejection
  • May 15, 2025: submission of full student papers for the Frans van Eemeren Prize
  • July 31, 2025: submission of long papers to commentators

Registration deadlines

  • April 1, 2025: registration open
  • June 30, 2025: early-bird registration deadline
  • July 31, 2025: late registration deadline

Dates of events

Organising committee
  • Marcin Koszowy (Warsaw University of Technology, Poland) – chair
  • Katarzyna Budzyńska (Warsaw University of Technology, Poland)
  • Jarosław Chudziak (Warsaw University of Technology, Poland)
  • Martin Hinton (University of Łódź, Poland)
  • Jakub Pruś (Ignatianum University in Cracow, Poland)

Technical assistants:

  • Ewelina Gajewska (Warsaw University of Technology, Poland)
  • Medea Kfoczyńska-Łukasz (Warsaw University of Technology, Poland)
  • Miriam Kobierski (University of Łódź, Poland)
  • Katarzyna Michałowska (Warsaw University of Technology, Poland)
Programme committee
  • Fabrizio Macagno (University of Lisbon, Portugal) – Chair
  • Katie Atkinson (University of Liverpool, UK)
  • Sarah Bigi (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milano, Italy)
  • David Godden (Michigan State University, Michigan, US)
  • Marcin Koszowy (Warsaw University of Technology, Poland)
  • Serena Villata (Sophia Antipolis, France)
  • Jean Wagemans (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
ECA steering committee
  • Sara Greco (Università della Svizzera Italiana, Lugano, Switzerland) – Chair
  • Steve Oswald (University of Fribourg, Switzerland) – Deputy Chair
  • Katie Atkinson (University of Liverpool, United Kingdom)
  • José Ángel Gascón (University of Murcia, Spain)
  • Henrike Jansen (University of Leiden, Netherlands)
  • Gabrijela Kišiček (University of Zagreb, Croatia)
  • Marcin Koszowy (Warsaw University of Technology, Poland)
  • Marcin Lewiński (Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal)
  • Dima Mohammed (Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal)
  • Elena Musi (University of Liverpool, United Kingdom)
  • Fabio Paglieri (ISTC-CNR, Rome, Italy)
  • Jan Albert van Laar (University of Groningen, The Netherlands)
  • Serena Villata (INRIA-CNRS, Nice-Sophia Antipolis, France)
  • Frank Zenker (University of Lund, Sweden)
Warsaw

Warsaw is a lively and inspiring Central European city with a rich cultural life. Though much of it is unassuming on the outside, the city has truly beautiful areas and an incredible heart and soul. With the ‘WARSAW TOUR APP’ you can discover the most interesting attractions of Warsaw.

Warsaw’s Chopin Airport is easily accessible from across the world, with many domestic and international connections, including some low-fare airlines. It’s just 20 minutes by train or taxi from the city centre. Warszawa Centralna (Warsaw Central Railway Station) is the main station from which you can easily walk to the conference venue in 15 minutes (Address: Plac Politechniki 1, 00-661 Warsaw – you can get there also by trams: 10, 11, 15, 35). For more information check Warsaw Public Transport website (https://www.wtp.waw.pl/en/public-transport-step-by-step/)