I am on the programme committee for the Wikimania conference in August, so I can give you some quick overview of what kind of research is likely to be presented and discussed there. I can guarantee you, if you're into Wikimedia-related research of any kind at all, this is an event you absolutely must attend, the first of its kind.
However, the programme has not yet been finalized, and all of this is subject to change as we sort out the travel budget, timeslots, etc. So, for all of the speakers listed below, insert a "probably maybe". Also keep in mind that this is organized *entirely* by unpaid volunteers and primarily over the Internet.
Wikimania, while primarily a conference for the community, is going to have a lot of presentations by academics, perhaps too many. The proceedings will of course be edited on a wiki, namely, on:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Wikimania05
The following speakers who are doing research into content or community have been notified as accepted. I am not listing tech-research, of which there will also be quite a lot, including my own presentation.
1) Erik Zachte: Timelines in Wikipedia 2) Erik Zachte and Jakob Voss: Measuring and visualizing Wikipedia content. 3) Yaron Ariel: Wikipedians’ sense of community, motivations, and knowledge building: a cross-cultural study 4) Jeremy Tobacman: The Motivation of Wikipedia Contributors 5) Amruta Lonkar, et al: Global Wikipedia. Communities of Langues & Culture 6) Cormac Lawler: Wikipedia as a learning community: content, conflict and the ‘common good’ 7) Joseph Reagle: A Case of Mutual Aid: Wikipedia, Politeness, and Perspective Taking 8) Cathy Ma, et al: Wikipedia – Anonymous Users as Good Users 9) Andreas Brand: Comparison between Wikipedia and open source projects: 10) Network analysis: Robert Bonato (evaluation of link relationships) 11) Boud(?): The role of pos/neg feedback and NPOV on meme evolution in the wikisphere 12) Tsila Hassine: The dynamics of NPOV disputes 13) Samuel Klein: History of the reference work 14) Wolfgang Georgsdorf: A Wiktionary for sign languages
More information about the conference at: http://wikimania.wikimedia.org/
Best,
Erik