The Doctoral Consortium of Academic Mindtrek 2026 took place in Tampere on 26 October, the day before the main conference. The mentors were Kaisa Väänänen, Jasmin Niess, Jonna Häkkilä, Mila Bujić and Kai Kunze.
Seven doctoral students presented their work and discussed it with the mentors and with each other: Ali Goodarzi, Yuxi Chen, Eveliina Toivonen, Tommi Kiianmies, Carlos Tiu Tiu, Negin Hashmati and Beste Demircan. Their topics covered adaptive conversational agents, the agency of biomaterials in design, systems intelligence in interdependent teams, extreme experiences in multimodal virtual reality, AI agents for blue-collar work, virtual companions for the mental health of young people, and somaesthetics in extended reality.
The presentations led to long discussions, and the breaks kept them going. The consortium is part of Academic Mindtrek 2026, which runs from 27 to 30 October in Tampere.
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