Previous Conferences

Diagrams has previously been held on 13 occasions, located at various places around the world.

Diagrams 2022

Diagrams 2022 was held at Sapienza University in Rome, Italy. It was the first physical event of the series in two years. The General Chair was Valeria Giardino, supported by Sven Linker as Senior Program Chair. The organizing committee also included Richard Burns (Main Track Chair), Francesco Bellucci (Philosophy Track Chair), Jean-Michel Boucheix (Psychology and Education Track Chair), Paolo Bottoni (Local Chair), Francesco Sapio (Local Chair), Amy R. Fox (Publicity Chair), Reetu Bhattacharjee (Graduate Symposium Chair) and Petrucio Viana (Proceedings Chair). The conference accepted 11 long papers, 19 short papers, 5 posters and 3 non-archival abstracts. There was one workshop: Diagrams of Life and Evolution, and a total of 4 tutorials.

The Best Paper Award went to Tuomo Hiippala and John Bateman for Introducing the Diagrammatic Semiotic Mode.

The Best Student Paper Award went to Alexander Dobler and Martin Nöllenburg for On Computing Optimal Linear Diagrams.

The proceedings are available from Springer (LNAI 13462).

Diagrams 2021

Diagrams 2021 ran as a virtual, synchronous event as a means to bring the community together after COVID disrupted Diagrams 2020. Registration was free for all delegates and the program ran over three days. In order to accommodate delegates from all across the globe, talks were scheduled over the full 24 hour period, allowing fair access to the conference for all. The General Chair was Amrita Basu, from Jadavpur University, supported by Gem Stapleton from the University of Cambridge as Senior Program Chair. The organizing committee also included: Sven Linker, Cathy Legg, Emmanuel Manalo, Mohanad Alqadah, Daniel Raggi, Mikkel Willum Johansen, Amirouche Moktefi, Petrucio Viana, and Reetu Bhattacharjee. The conference accepted 16 long papers, 25 short papers, 22 posters, and 4 non-archival abstracts.

The Best Paper Award went to Interactivity in Linear Diagrams, Peter Chapman.

The Best Student Paper Award went to Considerations in Representation Selection for Problem Solving: a Review, Aaron Stockdill, Daniel Raggi, Mateja Jamnik, Grecia Garcia Garcia, Peter Cheng.

An Honourable Mention for the Best Student Paper Award was given to What kind of opposition-forming operator is privation? José David García.

The proceedings are available from Springer (LNAI 12909).

Diagrams 2020

Diagrams 2020 was due to be hosted by Tallinn University of Technology in Estonia. However, the COVID-19 pandemic meant that the physical meeting was cancelled, and the conference took place virtually. The website hosted the titles, abstracts, presentations (where available) and discussions for accepted papers. The Senior Program Chair was Peter Chapman with Ahti Pietarinen serving as General Chair. The organizing committee also included: Leonie Bosveld de Smet (Main Track Chair), Valeria Giardino (Philosophy Track Chair), Jim Corter (Psychology Track Chair), Yacin Hamami (graduate symposium chair), Francesco Bellucci (workshop and tutorials), Jens Lemanski (publicity), and Sven Linker (proceedings). The conference accepted 20 long papers, 16 short papers, 23 posters, and 5 non-archival abstracts. Unfortunately, the satellite events (Tutorials, Workshops, and Graduate Symposium) did not go ahead because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Best Paper Award went to Hans Smessaert, Atsushi Shimojima, and Lorenz Demey for their paper Free Rides in Logical Space diagrams versus Aristotelian diagrams.

The Best Student Paper Award went to Valerie Lynn Therrien for her paper A Diagram of Choice: The Curious Case of Wallis’s Attempted Proof of the Parallel Postulate and the Axiom of Choice.

The proceedings are available from Springer (LNAI 12169).

Diagrams 2018

Diagrams 2018 was hosted by Edinburgh Napier University in the UK. The Program Chairs were Amirouche Moktefi and Gem Stapleton with Peter Chapman serving as General Chair. The organizing committee also included: Sarah Perez-Kriz (abstracts chair), Andrew Blake (graduate symposium), Renata de Freitas (workshop and tutorials), Atsushi Shimojima (publicity), and Francesco Bellucci (proceedings). The conference accepted 33 long papers, 33 short papers, 20 posters, and 17 non-archival abstracts. There was one workshop: the International Workshop on Set Visualization and Reasoning. A total of six tutorials were also held. The graduate symposium included 13 talks, and was partially supported by the US National Science Foundation.

The Best Paper Award went to William Bechtel, Adele Abrahamsen and Benjamin Sheredos for their paper titled Using Diagrams to Reason about Biological Mechanisms.

The Best Student Paper Award went to Almas Baimagambetov, John Howse, Gem Stapleton and Aidan Delaney for their paper titled Generating Effective Euler Diagrams.

The proceedings are available from Springer (LNAI 10871).

Diagrams 2016

Diagrams 2016 was held in Philadelphia, PA, USA. The Program Chairs were Mateja Jamnik and Yuri Uesaka, with Stephanie Elzer Schwartz serving as General Chair and Richard Burns serving as Local Chair. The organizing committee also included: Aidan Delaney (tutorials/workshop) and Luana Micallef (graduate symposium). The conference accepted 12 long papers, 11 short papers and 11 posters. Two Tutorials, a Graduate Symposium (sponsored by the US National Science Foundation) and a Workshop took place alongside the main conference. Students presenting at the graduate symposium also had the opportunity to present a poster during the main conference. Diagrams successfully co-located with the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society as well as Spatial Cognition 2016.

The Best Paper Award went to Jim Burton, Mihir Chakraborty, Lopamudra Choudhury and Gem Stapleton for their paper entitled Minimizing Clutter Using Absence in Venn-i^e.

The Best Student Paper Award went to Chenmu Xing, James E. Corter and Doris Zahner for their paper entitled Diagrams Affect Choice of Strategy in Probability Problem Solving.

The proceedings are available from Springer (LNAI 9781).

Diagrams 2014

Diagrams 2014 was held in Melbourne, Australia. The Program Chairs were Aidan Delaney and Helen Purchase, with Tim Dwyer serving as General Chair. The organizing committee also included: Karsten Klein, Michael Wybrow, Stephanie Schwartz, Cagatay Goncu and Jim Burton. The conference accepted 15 long papers, 9 short papers and 9 posters. A Tutorial, Graduate Symposium (sponsored by the US National Science Foundation) and two Workshops took place alongside the main conference. For the first time, students presenting at the graduate symposium also had the opportunity to present a poster during the main conference. As in 2008, Diagrams successfully co-located with the IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing.

The Best Paper Award went to Emmanuel Manalo and Yuri Uesaka for their paper entitled
Students’ Spontaneous Use of Diagrams in Written Communication: Understanding Variations According to Purpose and Cognitive Cost Entailed.

The Best Student Paper Award went to Andrew Blake, Gem Stapleton, Peter Rodgers, Liz Cheek and John Howse for their paper entitled The Impact of Shape on the Perception of Euler Diagrams.

The proceedings are available from Springer (LNAI 8578).

Diagrams 2012

Diagrams 2012 was held at the University of Kent, Canterbury UK. The Program Chairs were Phil Cox and Beryl Plimmer, with Peter Rodgers serving as General Chair. The organizing committee also included: Lisa Best, Aidan Delaney, Gem Stapleton and Nathaniel Miller. The conference accepted 16 long papers, 6 short papers and 12 posters. The number of long paper submissions were 54, resulting in an acceptance rate of 29.63%. A Tutorial, Graduate Symposium (sponsored by the US National Science Foundation) and three Workshops took place alongside the main conference.

The Best Paper Award went to Barbara Tversky, James E. Corter, Lixiu Yu, David L. Mason and Jeffrey V. Nickerson for their paper Representing Category and Continuum: Visualizing Thought.

The Best Student Paper Award (sponsored by the Cognitive Science Society) went to: Richard Burns, Sandra Carberry, Stephanie Elzer and Daniel Chester for their paper Automatically Recognizing Intended Messages in Grouped Bar Charts.

The proceedings are available from Springer (LNAI 7352).

Diagrams 2010

Diagrams 2010 was held during August 2010 in Portland, Orgeon, USA. The organizers were Ashok K. Goel, Mateja Jamink and N. Hari Naryanan. The organizing committee included Jim Davies, Stephanie Elzer and Unmesh Kurup. The proceedings, published by Springer in their Lecture Notes in Computer Science series, includes 14 long papers and 8 short papers accepted from about 70 submissions from 18 countries. Diagrams 2010 was collocated with the 32nd annual meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. It included a Graduate Student Symposium sponsored by the US National Science Foundation.

The Diagrams 2010 Best Paper Award went to Mike Stieff, Mary Hegarty & Bonnie Dixon for their paper titled Alternative Strategies for Spatial Reasoning with Diagrams.

The Diagrams 2010 Best Student Paper Award (sponsored by the Cognitive Science Society) went to Peng Wu for the paper titled Recognizing the Intended Message of Line Graphs. Sandra Carberry, Stephanie Elzer & Daniel Chester were co-authors.

The proceedings are available from Springer (LNAI 6170).

Diagrams 2008

Diagrams 2008 was held during September in Herrsching, Germany. This was the first time that Diagrams had been held outside of the UK or the USA. The organisers were Gem Stapleton (General Chair), John Howse and John Lee (Program Chairs), with Mark Minas as Local Chair. The proceedings were published by Springer in their Lecture Notes in Computer Science series (LNAI 5223), with 19 long papers and 6 short papers being accepted from the 70 submissions, which were received from 24 countries. For the first time, Diagrams was colocated, running in conjunction with the IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing and the ACM Symposium on Software Visualisation, along with two workshops and a graduate consortium; these events formed Visual Week.

In 2008, the Best Paper Award and the Best Student Paper Award were presented to, respectively:

  • An Eye-tracking Study of Exploitations of Spatial Constraints in Diagrammatic Reasoning, Atsushi Shimojima and Yasuhiro Katagi
  • What Diagrams Reveal about Representations in Linear Reasoning, and How they Help, Krista DeLeeuw and Mary Hegarty

The proceedings are available from Springer (LNAI 5223).

Diagrams 2006

Diagrams 2006 was held during June in Stanford, USA. The organisers were Dave Barker-Plummer (General Chair), Richard Cox and Nik Swoboda (Program Chairs). The proceedings were published by Springer in their Lecture Notes in Computer Science series (LNAI 4045) and the acceptance rate was 30%. Submissions were received from both academia and industry, covering 23 countries and, as is typical for Diagrams, representing a wide range of disciplines.

In 2006, the Best Paper Award and the Best Student Paper Award were presented to, respectively:

  • Communicative Signals as the Key to Automated Understanding of Simple Bar Charts, Stephanie Elzer, Sandra Carberry and Seniz Demir
  • Active Comparison as a Means of Promoting the Development of Abstract Conditional Knowledge and the Appropriate Choice of Diagrams in Math Word Problem Solving, Yuri Uesaka and Emmanuel Manaslo

The proceedings are available from Springer (LNAI 4045).

Diagrams 2004

Diagrams 2004 was held during March in Cambridge, UK. The organisers were Alan Blackwell (General Chair), Kim Marriot and Atsushi Shimojima (Program Chairs), and Mateja Jamnik (Local Chair). The proceedings were published by Springer in their Lecture Notes in Computer Science series (LNAI 2980) and the acceptance rate was 34%. Submissions were received from 18 countries.

In 2004, the Best Paper Award and the Best Student Paper Award were presented to, respectively:

  • Generating Readable Proofs: A Heuristic Approach to Theorem Proving with Spider Diagrams, Jean Flower, Judith Masthoff and Gem Stapleton
  • Incorporating Perceptual Task Effort into the Recognition of Intention in Information Graphics, Stephanie Elzer, Nancy Green, Sandra Carberry and James Hoffman

The proceedings are available from Springer (LNAI 2980).

Diagrams 2002

Diagrams 2004 was held during April in Callaway Gardens, USA. The organisers were Hari Narayanan (General Chair), Mary Hegarty and Bernd Meyer (Program Chairs). The proceedings were published by Springer in their Lecture Notes in Computer Science series (LNAI 2317) and the acceptance rate was 27%.

In 2002, the Best Paper Award was presented to:

  • Generating Euler Diagrams, Jean Flower and John Howse

The proceedings are available from Springer (LNAI 2317).

Diagrams 2000

Diagrams 2000 was held in September in Edinburgh, UK. The organisers were Program Chairs Michael Anderson, Peter Cheng and Volker Haarslev. The proceedings were published by Springer in their Lecture Notes in Computer Science series (LNAI 1889) and the acceptance rate was 30% .

The proceedings are available from Springer (LNAI 1889).