PPIG 2026 - 37th Annual Workshop 27 - 29 July 2026, UCL, London, UK & Online

The 37th Annual Workshop of the Psychology of Programming Interest Group (PPIG) will take place in the week of July 20th-24th. This will be a hybrid virtual/physical meeting hosted by the UCL Interaction Centre, in the heart of London, UK. We aim to make it worthwhile to join us in London, but you will also have the alternative of presenting and participating remotely.

THEME: Juxtapositions

London is a city of juxtapositions. Here, Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre stands opposite the banking district of the City of London, ancient Roman hair pins are excavated under the shadow of the Millenium Bridge, while universities dot London’s tourist attractions of museums, architecture, and shopping streets.

The UCL Interaction Centre too, is characterised by contrast. Technical advances happen alongside behavioural and psychological research. Researchers focus on humane technology design, next to the software development capital of the UK.

Following last year’s theme of ‘Intersections’, we look this year towards places where differing perspectives and disciplines live side by side, with all the negotiation, evolution and serendipity that comes along.

We invite authors and attendees to consider in 2026:

  • How do we thrive amongst the juxtaposition of human- and profit-centred practices?
  • How do we negotiate the contrasting challenges of sustainable pragmatism and individual empowerment?
  • How do we support human intelligence in a world of simulacra?
  • What other tensions do we need to navigate to produce alternative impacts on the world?
  • What should we be juxtaposing next?

Of course, as ever, any PPIG-[i]relevant topics will be welcomed.

BACKGROUND:

PPIG was established in 1987 in order to bring together people from diverse communities to explore common interests in the psychological aspects of programming and in the computational aspects of psychology. “Programming”, here, is interpreted in the broadest sense to include any aspect of software creation. PPIG is a diverse community with diverse interests. As always with PPIG, besides this year’s theme of juxtapositions, we welcome a wide range of submissions on a variety of topics, such as:

  • Programming and human cognition
  • Programming education and craft skill acquisition
  • Human-centred design and evaluation of programming languages, languages, tools, and infrastructure
  • Team/co-operative work in programming
  • End user programming
  • Distributed programming, programming distribution
  • Gender, age, culture and programming
  • New paradigms in programming
  • Code quality, readability, productivity and re-use
  • Mistakes, bugs and errors
  • Notational design
  • Unconventional interactions and quasi-programming
  • Non-human programming
  • Technology support for creativity
  • Music(al) programming
  • Liveness and interactivity in programming

DOCTORAL CONSORTIUM:

Doctoral students are warmly invited to submit work to the PPIG Doctoral Consortium, which has gained a reputation for being helpful, constructive and unthreatening.

Students who would benefit from support to attend the conference should get in touch with mariana.marasoiu@cst.cam.ac.uk.

SUBMISSIONS:

We welcome the following categories of submissions:

  • Full Papers: usually less than 10 pages, but no explicit limit as long as the reader’s interest is maintained
  • Short Work-In-Progress papers: about 4 pages, but use more if needed
  • Doctoral Consortium submissions: about 2 pages, but use more if needed
  • Reflections, Artworks, and System Demonstrations: typically a 1 page extended abstract

Please use our templates for papers. Submissions for the workshop should be uploaded to https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ppig2026.

IMPORTANT DATES:

Full papers and Work-in-Progress papers:

  • Abstract submission deadline: 6 May 2026
  • Paper submission deadline: 20 May 2026

Doctoral Consortium and Reflections, artworks and demos extended abstracts:

  • Submission deadline: 3 June 2026

Authors will be notified: as soon as possible, by 10 June 2026 at the latest

Conference: 27-29 July 2026

Camera-ready submission deadline: 1 September 2026

  • Note: PPIG uses a post-proceedings process, so that authors can incorporate the workshop discussion and feedback into their final paper.

Have any questions? Reach out to us at ppig.workshop+2026@gmail.com

We look forward to your submissions and participation!

Nancy, Luke, and Mariana