11th Academics and Practitioners Roundtable
2026 Information Architecture Conference
Arch Street Meeting House, 320 Arch Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19106
Tuesday April 14, 2026, 9:00 - 3:30PM ET
We invite you to join us in exploring a simple and profound question: how do we adapt the discipline and practice of information architecture for an evolving world?
As Andrea Resmini said in his 2025 World IA Day Global keynote, we need information architecture to make our day-to-day experiences and our connected lives more human, meaningful, and valuable for everyone. We need IA to make artificial intelligence human-centered and planet-centered. And we need it to help us understand and solve the world’s pressing social and environmental challenges.
At the 11th IA Roundtable, we convene to delve more deeply into several of these challenges, with the aim of articulating tangible approaches and identifying artefacts we can develop to advance IA's progress.
Andrea Resmini
Halmstad University
Stacy Merrill Surla
University of Maryland / Stellar UX
Jason Hobbs
University of Johannesburg
This Roundtable is designed for IA and UX thought leaders, teachers, and practitioners who are interested in being part of a global project to evolve information architecture as a discipline and a practice.
You can expect the following topics to be this discussed at this year's Roundtable:
As in previous years, the Roundtable is organized as a workshop with facilitated discussion and lively debate, incorporating activities to produce the intended outputs. It will begin with a series of lightning talks, followed by co-design activities. The outline for the day is as follows:
Interested practitioners and academics from UX and other fields are welcome to join us.
Participants can choose to submit a talk, or can join as auditors. All participants are expected to engage with the presentations, contribute to the discussion, and be fully included in the co-design sessions.
Attendees are required to register for the IA Roundtable through the IA Conference. A fee of $49 will be charged to cover the costs of the workshop.
Participants often carry out additional activities following the Roundtable. For practitioners, this could involve posting their lightning talk, writing an article, or presenting at a conference to share their insights with other practitioners. Academics might write a paper or a chapter for a book.
Most Roundtable attendees attend the IA Summit, but you are not required to register for the conference.
Lightning talks provide context and ideas that set the stage for general Roundtable discussions and activities. If you're interested in being a lightning talk presenter, we welcome your participation.
You can also attend the roundtable without giving a lightning talk. Everyone is invited and expected to participate in the activities of the day and contribute to the conversations.
