Technostalgia
Afterlives of 80s-90s’ Digital Technologies
June 19, 2026 (9.30 am to 4.00 pm)
Les Rotondes, Luxembourg City
While digital technologies are dominated by acceleration, constant upgrades and equally irreversible obsolescence, nostalgia for past technologies is at the same time increasingly present and productive. Nostalgia persists – and even thrives – as a site of imagination, memory, cultural production, creativity and maintenance. This one-day conference seeks to explore how digital and computing pasts are remembered, revived, and reimagined. Technostalgia stands at the intersection of personal memory and collective practices, intertwining affects, communities, cultures, heritage, markets and ideologies. Whether through the emulation of obsolete systems, the storytelling of early computing experiences, the maintenance of vintage hardware, the emulation of videogames and dead formats, the aesthetic strategies of retro interfaces and design, a market of “geek” artifacts, activities of communities related to retro-computing or the demo scene, technostalgia opens a fertile ground for analysing both “restorative” and “reflective” relations to past IT technologies (Van der Heijden, 2015). It invites us to discuss the role of “techno-melancholia” (Fickers, 2009), memories, different expressions of contemporary nostalgia (Fantin, Fevry and Niemeyer, 2021) and digital nostalgia (Niemeyer in Becker and Trigg, 2024), maintenance and heritagisation, remembrance and restoration (Van Dijck and Bijsterveld, 2009), as well as some “desired return to an ideal past” (Pinch and Reinecke, 2009).
To analyse the specificities of technostalgia when related to IT, computing and digital artifacts of the 80s and 90s, we welcome proposals from researchers, artists, archivists, designers, curators, and practitioners engaging with its multiple dimensions and addressing one or several of the following topics:
(1) Narratives
Nostalgia in Personal and Collective Narratives of Computing History
The Role of Oral Histories in Preserving Digital Heritage
Use of “Nostalgic Practices” for and by Research
(2) Practices and Communities
Practices and Communities of Vintage Hardware, Retro Computing, ...
Relationships between Communities, Companies and Institutions
Revival of the Past: Virtual Machines, Emulators, Digital Preservation
The Labor and Challenges of Maintaining Dead or Outdated Systems
(3) Politics
Techno-conservatism and Technostalgia as Ideological Tool
Retro as Resistance and Low-tech Movements
(4) Market
The Business of Retro Design and Vintage Revival
The Ecosystem of Retro Tech Market
Maintenance and Recycling
Submission Guidelines
Please submit a proposal (in English) including:
- Title of your presentation
- Abstract (max. 400 words)
- Short bio (max. 100 words)
to technostalgia@uni.lu by November 30, 2025.
Notifications of acceptance are expected before December 20.
The conference organizers will provide coffee breaks and lunch, and there is no fee. Accommodation and travel remain at the own charge of participants, although we may exceptionally provide some support on request.
Local organisers
CD-Hist Team : https://www.uni.lu/c2dh-en/research-projects/cd-hist/
Fred Pailler, Valérie Schafer and Alina Volynskaya
Scientific Committee
Susan Aasman (University of Groningen)
Sandra Camarda (C2DH, University of Luxembourg)
Andreas Fickers (C2DH, University of Luxembourg)
Stefan Krebs (C2DH, University of Luxembourg)
Katharina Niemeyer (Université du Québec à Montréal)
Benjamin Thierry (Sorbonne University)
This conference is organised within the frame of the CD-Hist project (2024-2026) conducted at C2DH and supported by the FNR (C23/SC/18097856).
