The world of automotive markets and production is becoming more finite. After several decades of steady liberalisation of trade, driven by the globalisation and regionalisation of automotive value chains, tariffs and other types of protectionism are back: raw materials, energy, markets for cars, parts and technologies are not as accessible as they used to be. From rare earths to microprocessors, from Chinese BEVs to German premium cars, from Russian oil and gas to refined Cobalt and Lithium, from big data and AI software to datacentres and cloud services, markets alone cannot be relied on anymore to access, buy or sell these critical products and resources. Large-scale industrial policies increasingly steer national economies and geo-economic considerations govern trade policy.
This return of protectionism raises many important questions and challenges for the automotive sector. In continuity with our 2025 International Colloquium in Shanghai, the role of China, as both the main cause and driver of this return, remains central.
Most of the new tariffs and other protectionist measures introduced since 2019 are reactions to the expansionism of China, which has become in the space of few years the biggest global exporter of cars and auto-parts, moving from a trade deficit of $20 billion in 2020 to a trade surplus of $127 billion in 2024 – and of $186 billion if we include the trade of lithium-ion batteries.
For the 2026 International Colloquium in Paris, we welcome papers that keep exploring the sources and drivers of this exceptional expansion, and more generally of the competitive advantage acquired by Chinese firms not only on EVs and SDVs, but also on ICE vehicles and their entire value chains.
How can we quantify and characterize this competitive advantage? What are its underlying foundations? To what extent is it driven by successful Chinese state policies? How much does it stem from distinct, new production models dedicated to electric vehicle development and manufacturing? How significant is the role of value co-creation through the expansion of ecosystems, including AI and autonomous driving technologies? How much is this influenced by emerging consumer behaviors, as well as ESG standards? Finally, to what extent does China’s shift towards sustainability and its growing control of green technologies supply chains also imply a shift from the linear economy towards a more circular economy - both in terms of regulations and business models?
We are also very much interested in how Western states and automotive industries are responding to the "Chinese challenge".
What strategies are they adopting to address both the rise of Chinese exports and FDI in cars, auto-parts and batteries? Can Western OEMs, battery manufacturers, and value chains catch up with their Chinese competitors, and if so, how? Can Western states replicate the success of China's new energy vehicle policies? Alternatively, could Western and Chinese players collaborate to create value co-creation solutions, fostering new forms of "co-petition"?
How can other emerging countries emulate the Chinese success? What are the conditions for leapfrogging not only in EVs, but also in battery manufacturing, new mobility services, connected vehicles and other new key technological domains? For instance, how can the key role of strategic raw materials in the EV transition provide levers to other Asian, South American and African countries for upgrading their automotive industries?
While the scenario of trade wars keeps unfolding, we also see an increasing amount of cooperation between Chinese and Western companies, as well as a fast-growing direct investment in Europe and North America as well as in South America, Africa and Russia by Chinese OEMs and battery makers.
Several analysts as well as many CEOs of Western companies highlight how much cooperation is needed to meet regional CO2 targets and achieve carbon neutrality in road transport by 2050. In fact, joint ventures between Chinese state-owned enterprises and Western OEMs have been developing for many years, but we now witness a new distinct wave of acquisitions, joint ventures and strategic partnerships between private Chinese OEMs and battery makers, on the one hand, and Western OEMs and their first-tier suppliers, on the other hand. These joint efforts are not limited to electrification, they also concern autonomous driving and new mobility services. Chinese companies have also been increasing investments in South American and African countries where they play an increasing central role in car manufacturing, technological transfers, and infrastructure building.
We welcome papers that explore these new forms of cooperation and analyse their implications for both Western and Chinese companies, their suppliers, and their workers, as well in other automotive regions in South America, Africa and Russia.
How do Chinese companies approach their new role of technology leaders? What are the institutional forms taken by these collaborations/joint ventures? Do they differ from the long-standing joint ventures between state owned enterprises and Western OEMs in China? What type of employment relationship do they develop? In comparison with the rich debate about the Japanese model in the 1980s and 1990s, is it time to talk about a “Chinese model”, and if yes, how do we characterise it? Can it be exported overseas? And if yes, what type of hybridisation does it entail?
Besides China, the United-States is also playing an increasingly central role in steering economies away from globalisation. The second term of Donald Trump has been marked by an astonishing number of trade measures and threats against multilaterism.
We welcome papers that analyse the impact of these measures over the car industry both in the US and globally.
The combined pressure of China’s expansion and the US aggressive stance towards multilateral trade is redefining the conditions under which regional and global value chains function, the power relationships that structure their organisation, as well as the relative capabilities of their different actors involved in extracting value and controlling technologies.
How do OEMs adapt to this new configuration? How do they shift from a model of governance based on the ultimate search of efficiency through cost reduction, to a new model of governance where economic and technological sovereignty becomes increasingly central? How does this change the relationships between economic actors and governments and the role that governments play in the governance of value chains? How does this change the geography of production and the sharing of value added? How does this change work and employment in the Global North? Does it empower or weaken trade unions? Does it create new opportunities or new threats for the Global South and its companies and workers?
The return of protectionism is driven by threats and disruptions which question the way the automotive industry has been organised globally during the last thirty years, however it also opens up new opportunities to shorten supply chains, reduce strategic dependencies and structure new, more sustainable industries.
We welcome papers that explore these opportunities and the way they are seized by the actors and stakeholders of the automotive sector and beyond.
We would like in particular to bring into focus the strong development of the Circular Economy (CE) in such a context, not only as a way of making automotive production and consumption more sustainable, but also as a tool of industrial policy to reduce strategic dependencies by structuring new industries for repairing, re-manufacturing and re-cycling both vehicles and components.
How do public policies and regulations such as the extended responsibility of producers and the end-of-life vehicle regulations promote a CE? How do they relate with the concept of sovereignty and economic autonomy? Is the CE deployed as a way to reduce strategic dependency on imported strategic materials, notably for battery production? How realistic and effective will be such a strategic implementation of the CE?
How far and in which direction do these policies and regulations push OEMs to implement a CE? What type of business models, productive organization and employment relationships do automotive companies develop to comply with these regulations and seize these opportunities?
How, on the other hand, do traditional actors of the downstream part of the automotive sector (repair shops, fast fitters, end-of-life vehicles centres and recyclers) deal with this new regulatory framework? How are these existing markets for repairing and recycling cars and parts are transformed by these new policies?
More fundamentally, does the CE make the linear economy of the automotive sector more sustainable by extending the life of vehicles and their components and parts, including batteries, and by reducing the need to extract and transform materials to produce new vehicles and parts? Or does the CE complement the linear economy of the automotive sector via the creation of new markets without really making the whole industry more sustainable?
We welcome papers that delve into these questions, explore them from different angles and layers of the value chain, at different stages of the (extended) life of the product, in different regions and countries, and also from different sectors and from historical perspectives.
While the focus of this year's call for papers is on the return of protectionism and the way it interacts with the push towards sustainability, in particular via the circular economy, we also welcome papers that analyse the current transformations of the global automotive industry from other perspectives.
We will notably keep focusing our attention on electrification as the main technological transformation currently experienced by the global automotive industry. We welcome papers that analyse how electrification is implemented and developed in different national contexts and in different companies; that examine the evolving role of public policies and regulations in shaping and sustaining the transition towards battery electric vehicles; that focus on the battery sector and the structuring of domestic electric vehicle value chains in different countries and regions; that discuss the implications of electrification for workers (restructuring, reskilling and training, quality of work, contracts and negotiations, etc.) and consumers (affordability of cars, access to mobility, mobility poverty, usages and automobility cultures, etc.); and that explore/question the relationship between electrification and digitalisation, in particular the phenomenon of the so-called “twin transition”.
We also welcome papers that focus more specifically on the current crisis of electrification, in the US following the election of Donald Trump, but also in in Europe, where the CO2 targets for 2030 and 2035 have been weakened in response to some backlash against electrification.
On digitalisation we also welcome papers that analyse its past, on-going and future impacts on both process and product. We welcome papers that explore how Industry 4.0 (and 5.0) keeps diffusing, thereby transforming the automotive sector, impacting work and employment, triggering reshoring or offshoring and transforming global and regional value chains. We also welcome papers that take into account the more recent developments of Artificial Intelligence and how they are implemented in manufacturing processes, product development and logistics in the automotive sector.
After having discussed in depth during last years international colloquium the future prospects of Connected Autonomous, Shared and Electric vehicles and AI we look forward to engaging with new contributions taking into account the most recent developments of autonomous driving and new mobilities in different national contexts and from different perspectives such as Mobility as a Service, platform economy, business models, transport studies or science and technology studies.
We also welcome on all these issues and debates papers that take into account different stakeholders’ perspectives: from industry associations to NGOs, from political parties to trade unions, from consumers’ associations to regional and local governments.
We welcome papers from academics, and all the members of our international network, but also from all actors that are involved in the public debate, such as trade unions, environmental NGOs, employers associations, government agencies, as well as auto manufacturers and their suppliers. We welcome papers from all social sciences, both focusing on the current transitions, but also providing historical accounts of previous transitions where similar debates took place.
The call is organised in three streams that focus (1) on challenges for work and labour; (2) on social and regulatory contexts; and (3) on companies, products, technologies and value chains.
To submit a proposal you need to log in with your user account (or create a new one) and click on the submit link under the theme you want to submit for.
A selection of the best papers presented during the colloquium, including the winner of the young author’s prize (see below) will be included in a special issue of the International Journal of Automotive Technology and Management (IJATM).
Guidelines for paper submission
To submit a proposal, please click the link below the chosen theme. Proposals should range between 500 and 1,000 words. They should present the outline of the research question (purpose), the methodology (design), the main results (findings) and their significance (practical and theoretical implications).
Instructions on how to submit final articles will be sent by email following the proposal acceptance. Proposals will be accepted on a rolling basis, and those submitted at the March 12, 2026 deadline will be accepted by the March 16, 2026 (at the latest).
Final articles should range between 5,000-7,000 words (excluding figures, tables and references) in order to be considered for the IJATM special issue. High-quality articles that exceed 7,000 words will be also considered on a case-by-case basis.
Guidelines for panel submission
To submit a panel, follow the guidelines for paper submission above for each communication, and send a panel proposal to gerpisa@gerpisa.org. Panels will be accepted on rolling basis and their specific calls/presentations added below.
IJATM special issue
The International Journal of Automotive Technology and Management (IJATM) published by Inderscience publishes a special issue each year selected from papers presented during the GERPISA yearly colloquium. One or two papers from young authors will also be published in this special issue. An evaluation committee, composed of members of the GERPISA International Steering Committee, will assess the papers during the colloquium (young authors and others) and invite those chosen to submit to the IJATM Special Issue. After the decision of the GERPISA’s steering committee, the selected papers will be refereed through a double-blind process prior to final acceptance.
The criteria of the assessment are the relevance of the topic, the quality of the presentation (for works in progress), the strength of the results, the quality of the methodological work, and the review of the literature. Work across the social sciences (including history, management, economics, sociology, geography, and political science) dealing with the automobile industry is welcome.
Gerpisa Young Author Prize
The Young Author’s Prize of GERPISA, consisting of the publication of the winning paper in a special issue of IJATM and a €1,500 award, recognizes the work of young researchers on topics related to the automobile industry. Our goal is to encourage scholars to focus on topics related to the automobile industry early in their career.
Requirements to submit a paper proposal for the young author’s prize:
- Masters and Ph.D. students, post-docs and junior faculty are eligible. Applicants should be under age 37. Papers co-authored with a senior researcher will be assessed only for masters and doctoral students. We exclude those at the associate professor level or above, and senior researchers.)
- Paper based on the analysis (whether theoretical, methodological, or empirical) of the automobile industry (topics have to cover one of the five themes of the colloquium);
- Presentation of the paper by the young author during the 34th international colloquium in person.
- Submission online (specifying that the authors wish to be considered for the prize). They should also email basic information (name, date of birth, nationality, status, university/research affiliation, topic, and abstract) to Giuseppe Calabrese (giuseppe.giulio.calabrese@ircres.cnr.it), and Tommaso Pardi (tommaso.pardi@ens-cachan.fr) before 12 March 2026, for the proposal and 11 May 2026, for the final paper.
Paper Preparation:
- An original article would normally consist of 5000-7000 words (excluding figures, tables and references).
- All articles must be written in UK English. If English is not your first language, please ask an English-speaking colleague to proofread your article.
- Submissions may be formatted in single or double spacing, preferably in Times New Roman size 12 font.
The paper should include the following:
- Title: as short as possible, with no abbreviations or acronyms.
- Abstract: approximately 100 words, maximum 150.
- Keywords: approximately 10-15 words or phrases. Keywords are important for online searching;
- Address*: position, department, name of institution, email address for each author.
- Biographical notes*: approximately 100 words per author.
- Text: no more than 7000 words (excluding figures, tables and references).
- Tables and figures: please put in the text where tables and figures are positioned.
- References: IJATM papers are recommended.
- Notes: the less the better.
- Acknowledgment: in case you have any.
