Learn X Design 2027: Crossings at ITU Taşkışla, Istanbul

The ninth Learn X Design conference will be held at Istanbul Technical University’s Taşkışla campus from 8 to 10 September 2027, hosted by ITU’s Department of Industrial Design. The biennial design education conference of the Design Research Society’s Education Special Interest Group has a call for contributions open until 11 December 2026, 23:59 AoE, with acceptance notices due in April 2027.

The Crossings theme

After Paris, Oslo, Chicago, London, Ankara, Jinan and Aveiro, the conference comes to Istanbul under the theme Crossings. It looks at the encounters reshaping design education: established and new teaching methods, human and artificial intelligence, local and global knowledge, studio practice and digital environments, and the edges between disciplines. The organisers describe the city, where continents and histories meet, as both a physical and symbolic setting for the theme.

How to take part

• Research papers: 3,000 to 6,000 words
• Case studies: 3,000 to 4,000 words
• Pedagogical approaches: 2,000 to 3,000 words
• Letters: 1,000 to 2,000 words
• Visual papers: up to 2,000 words
• Conversations, with length set by content, and workshop proposals of 1,000 to 1,500 words

Doctoral researchers can also submit short papers of 1,500 to 2,000 words to dedicated PhD Crossings sessions. All submissions are in English and go through anonymous peer review, and accepted work will be published in the Learn X Design proceedings and archived open access in the DRS Digital Library.