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FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS

Ethical and Technical Challenges for Identity-Aware NLP
Workshop at LREC 2026, Palma de Mallorca, Spain, May 11-16, 2026

https://identity-aware-ai.github.io/
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Workshop Theme: What makes each of us unique, and which ethical and technical challenges does this imply?

OVERVIEW

What makes us unique? Language (and thus the automatic processing of it) is about people and what they mean. However, current practice relies on the assumptions that the involved humans are all the same, and that if enough data (and compute power) is present, the resulting generalizations will be robust enough and represent the majority.

This approach often harms marginalized communities and ignores the notion of identity in models and systems. Our interdisciplinary workshop aims to raise the question of "what makes each of us unique?" to the NLP community.

WORKSHOP GOALS

- The development of a shared and interdisciplinary understanding of identities and how identity is treated in AI
- The development of new methods that push the effective, fair, and inclusive treatment of individuals in AI to the next level

TOPICS OF INTEREST

We invite submissions on the following topics:

Modeling subjective phenomena and disagreement: Personalization and perspectivist methods that challenge one-size-fits-all approaches by leveraging disaggregated data and annotator metadata. Methods that learn from disagreements rather than forcing consensus that erases unique perspectives.

Auditing and evaluating identity representation: Techniques to measure how well models represent diverse identities, diagnose failures in capturing marginalized perspectives, and assess whether systems treat all identities equitably. Frameworks for identity-aware performance evaluation beyond aggregate metrics.

Bias detection and fairness interventions: Methods to identify when models fail marginalized groups due to over-generalization, and techniques to mitigate such harms while preserving model utility.

Identity representation in LLMs: How language models encode (or erase) diverse identities, embody particular perspectives, and either reproduce or challenge stereotypes. Measuring LLMs' capacity for reasoning about identities beyond majority groups.

Socio-political applications: Modeling polarization, opinion formation, and deliberation in ways that account for identity rather than assuming homogeneous populations. How identity-aware approaches improve accuracy for politically sensitive tasks.

Methodological foundations from social sciences: Best practices from psychology and survey science for measuring identity constructs (values, morals, narratives). Addressing challenges of using LLMs to model diverse populations while avoiding erasure through aggregation.

Accountability and responsible development: Ethical responsibilities when building systems that represent (or exclude) identities. Making AI development processes accountable to marginalized communities most affected by over-generalization.

SUBMISSION TYPES

We welcome the following types of submissions:

* Long papers: 4-8 pages of content (excluding references)
* Short papers: 4-8 pages of content (excluding references)
* Non-archival submissions, student project presentations, mixed-media submissions

For non-archival submissions, we welcome creative formats including:
- Art, poetry, music
- Blog posts
- Jupyter notebooks
- Teaching materials
- Videos
- Findings papers
- Late-breaking papers
- Extended abstracts

For creative format submissions, please submit a PDF containing:
- A summary or abstract of your work
- A link to your work (if hosted externally)
- Any additional context or documentation

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

* All submissions will be double-blind reviewed
* Submissions should follow LREC 2026 formatting guidelines available at: https://lrec2026.info/authors-kit/
* Papers must be 4-8 pages in length (excluding references)
* Papers must include ethics and limitations sections
* NO appendices are allowed
* Submission link will be provided in the Second Call for Papers
* Accepted papers will be published in the workshop proceedings

WORKSHOP FORMAT

The workshop will be a half-day event featuring:
- Keynote speeches from leading experts in the field
- Paper presentations (oral and lightning talks)
- Participatory design activity to develop a shared interdisciplinary vocabulary, identify current gaps in datasets for studying identity, and design a vision for collecting new datasets

We are committed to ensuring that our workshop is accessible to all. The workshop will be held in a hybrid format, allowing both in-person and virtual participation.

IMPORTANT DATES

All deadlines are 11:59 PM AoE (Anywhere on Earth)

* Submission Deadline: February 20, 2026
* Notification of Acceptance: March 20, 2026
* Camera-Ready Deadline: March 30, 2026
* Workshop Date: 16 May 2026 (exact date TBA)

DIVERSITY & INCLUSION

We actively encourage submissions from underrepresented communities and countries. The workshop organizers will provide mentorship and thorough feedback, especially to first-time authors and reviewers.

ORGANIZERS

Pranav A (University of Hamburg)
Valerio Basile (University of Turin)
Neele Falk (University of Stuttgart)
David Jurgens (University of Michigan)
Gabriella Lapesa (GESIS, Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences & Heinrich-Heine University of Düsseldorf)
Anne Lauscher (University of Hamburg)
Soda Marem Lo (University of Turin)

CONTACT

For queries, please contact: identity-aware-ai@googlegroups.com