Susan Williams, Petra Schubert and Jennifer Gerbl from the CEIR team attended the 24th EUSSET Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (ECSCW 2026) in Munich, Germany, from 29 June to 3 July 2026, where we had the opportunity to present our recent work.
Keynote “From collaboration software portfolios to enterprise collaboration platforms”
Petra Schubert and Susan Williams gave a keynote titled “From collaboration software portfolios to enterprise collaboration platforms”, which reflected on the fifteen years of research in CEIR. Over the past two decades, the technologies supporting organisational workgroups have changed considerably, moving from portfolios of unconnected tools towards enterprise-wide information infrastructures that support collaborative work and the production of digital work products. Yet most research still concentrates on situated, micro-level studies of individuals and workgroups, leaving the long-term, organisational-level view largely unexamined. The talk covered a lot of ground, showing how enterprise collaboration platforms have taken shape over time, what has been learned from working with more than 40 organisations across the DACH region, and what it takes to sustain a research programme of this length. It closed by looking ahead to the next shift these platforms are undergoing, as AI is introduced to deliver new content-based services and questions of digital sovereignty grow more urgent.
Workshop on Hybrid Collaboration
The 3rd International Workshop on Hybrid Collaboration – Recent Perspectives on Hybrid Work, which Jennifer co-organised, brought together researchers approaching hybrid work and collaboration from different angles. The day combined position paper presentations and discussion with a more interactive session on what the future of hybrid work might look like, which made for a lively exchange of perspectives across the day. Further information and the workshop materials are available at https://hycos.kwmhgb.at/hybrid2026/.
Conference Paper on Emerging Practices in Hybrid Work Coordination
Jennifer presented the paper “Navigating Flexibility Through Stability: Emerging Practices in Hybrid Work Coordination”, co-authored with Susan Williams. Drawing on a longitudinal diary study and interviews with a hybrid workgroup, the paper examines how work is organised differently across work locations and how workgroup members coordinate their synchronous activities given the increased flexibility that hybrid working brings. It shows how new work practices emerged that were shaped by the workgroup’s hybrid work policy, highlighting that hybrid work arrangements set the conditions under which collaborative practices develop, and that designing them requires careful consideration of how they facilitate or hinder the coordination of joint work. The full paper is available in the EUSSET Digital Library (https://doi.org/10.48340/ecscw2026_042).
References
Gerbl, Jennifer; Williams, Susan P. (2026): Navigating Flexibility Through Stability: Emerging Practices in Hybrid Work Coordination. In: Proceedings of the 24th EUSSET Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (ECSCW) – Conference Papers. DOI: 10.48340/ecscw2026_042. Reports of the European Society for Socially Embedded Technologies. ISSN: 2510-2591.