Call for participation: Open Conference of AI Agents for Qualitative Research 2026

Dear Reader,

Some months ago I saw a conference from Stanford University called AI Agents for Science. Their idea was simple. Let AI take the lead and see what happens. That event has now taken place. You can see the results here: Agents4Science 2025 Virtual Conference

I asked the team if we could copy their format and apply it to qualitative research. They said yes. So, I formed a small organizing group and now our conference is live.

Here are the key dates to keep in mind:

📌 Paper submission deadline: 31 Jan 2026
 📌 Registration opens: 24 Nov 2025
 📅 Date: 13 March 2026

AI Agents 4 Qual Research - Conference Website

This conference isn’t about replacing human qualitative researchers. It’s about seeing what happens when we hand over the lead to AI assistants and agents, let them drive parts of the journey, then reflect on what worked and what didn’t.

We invite you to test boundaries, share your successes and your failures, and build a research community grounded in curiosity, transparency and rigor.

What we’ll explore:

• How far can AI contribute to ideation, reseach design, data collection, analysis, and reporting in qualitative inquiry?

• Where does human insight still carry the weight

• What norms, practices and ethics need to evolve if AI plays a more active role?

We welcome researchers, methodologists, tool-builders and curious collaborators from qualitative inquiry and AI alike.

If you’re working with qualitative data, reflective methods, human/computer-interaction, or simply want to see what happens when the usual roles get turned around—it’s for you.

Please share and distribute this call for papers to your networks ! Here is the direct link to the call:

Call for papers - AI Agents 4 Qual Research

We hope you will take part and are already thinking about a project you could contribute. You may use any tools you like. We are of course curious to see how some of you will bring QInsights into the experiment.

Warm regards,

Susanne

Dr. Susanne Friese
Rebel Methodologist
Founder of Qeludra and Co-Founder of QInsights

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