Category Archives: Calls

2nd Call for Papers: DRS Special Interest Groups on Experiential Knowledge (EKSIG)

Design Research Society 2018 
University of Limerick
25th-28th June 2018
 
 
Track Theme:
EXPERIENTIAL KNOWLEDGE IN COLLABORATIVE INTERDISCIPLINARY DESIGN RESEARCH
 
Arguably, design practice has transformed from one based on the production of artefacts to one that engages expertise and knowledge from multiple disciplines. Collaboration between stakeholders has become indispensible, and research has played a crucial role in exploring the changing territorial context of designing and making. This is particularly evident in the fields of New Materials, Smart Textiles and Human-Computer-Interaction (HCI), where research tends to be conducted in teams comprising different disciplinary experts who may work across academic, commercial and public sectors, and may include designers alongside, for example, scientists, technologists, artists, business strategists and policy makers. Various partners are in dialogue with one another, developing, consolidating and enhancing knowledge while generating new opportunities for interdisciplinary knowledge exchange.

The EKSIG track aims to examine collaboration within design research teams that comprise members with diverse disciplinary expertise. This is to understand how individual experiential knowledge, or knowledge gained by practice, is shared, how collective experiential knowledge is accumulated and communicated in and through collaboration, and how it is embodied in the outputs and may be traced back to the origin of the practice. The track also aims to illuminate making as the action of change in which matter and materials are transformed through collaboration, interaction or negotiation between the collaborative team and their material environment. Making within collaborations occurs in multiple forms, on many levels and in different contexts and, through making, meaning is made, communicated and shared. Learning is a process of change where existing knowledge and experience of a certain topic is reviewed, added or transformed. The track will explore how learning is transferred and articulated within multidisciplinary teams. Starting with an understanding of making and collaborative learning, it will discuss how we can create a greater awareness of our responsibilities as designers, researchers, consumers, teachers and members of society.

We welcome papers which exemplify interdisciplinarity through worked examples, and from researchers and practitioners whose work is centred on the experiential knowledge of collaborative work in interdisciplinary projects. We are interested in building a rich collection of case studies that may contribute to a more systematic approach for studying and integrating experiential knowledge into design practice and research. Submissions should focus on peer-level collaboration, illuminating its usefulness for the partners involved, and highlight the relationships built within the collaboration, as well as the approaches used and the new knowledge gained and transferred within the team.


Keywords: collaboration, design practice and research, experiential knowledge, interdisciplinary, making, materiality


Indicative references:

Abrahamson, D. & Chase, K. (2015). Interfacing Practices: Domain Theory Emerges via Collaborative Reflection. Reflective Practice: International and Multidisciplinary Perspectives, 16(3): 372–389. DOI: 10.1080/14623943.2015.1052384.

Bhömer, M., Tomico, O., Kleinsmann, M., Kuusk, K. & Wensveen, S. (2012). Designing Smart Textile Services Through Value Networks, Team Mental Models and Shared Ownership. In Proceedings of the Third Service Design and Service Innovation Conference (pp. 53–63). Espoo: Laurea University of Applied Sciences.

Bowen, S., Durrant, A., Nissen, B., Bowers, J. & Wright, P. (2016). The Value of Designers’ Creative Practice within Complex Collaborations. Design Studies, 46, 174-198. DOI: 10.1016/j.destud.2016.06.001.

Ingold, T. (2013). Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. London: Routledge.

Mikkonen, J. & Pouta, E. (2016). Flexible Wire-Component for Weaving Electronic Textiles. In Proceedings of 2016 IEEE 66th Electronic Components and Technology Conference (pp. 1656–1663). DOI 10.1109/ECTC.2016.180.

Nimkulrat, N. & Matthews, J. (forthcoming 2017). Ways of Being Strands: Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration Using Craft and Mathematics. Design Issues, 33(4).

Rutkowska, J., Lamas, D., Visser, F. S., Wodyk, Z., & Bańka, O. (2017). Shaping Loyalty: Experiences from Design Research Practice. Interactions, 24(3), 60–65.

Submission:

– Your paper will need to be between 5000 and 6000 words (maximum) in length excluding abstract and references using formatting applied in the template (see attached).
– All submissions must be in the English language.
– The online submission system will be open from 5th September 2017 and full papers must be submitted by midnight on 6th November 2017.

Key Dates:

– Submission system opens:  5th September 2017
– Deadline for full papers: 6th November 2017
– Notification of accepted papers:  8th February 2018
– Deadline for full paper revisions:  6th March 2018
– Final acceptance of revised papers:  27th March 2018
– Conference Dates: 25th-28th June 2018

Track Chair: Nithikul Nimkulrat, Estonian Academy of Arts, Estonia

Track Sub-Chairs:

Abigail Durrant, Northumbria University, UK
Camilla Groth, University College of Southeast Norway, Norway
Marte S. Gulliksen, University College of Southeast Norway, Norway
Kristi Kuusk, Estonian Academy of Arts, Estonia
David Lamas, Tallinn University, Estonia
Janette Matthews, Loughborough University, UK
Jussi Mikkonen, Aalto University, Finland
Oscar Tomico, Elisava, Barcelona School of Design and Engineering, Spain and Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands
Stephan Wensveen, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands


 
 
Contact
 
Any enquiries about the conference, please contact drs2018limerick@ul.ie
Any enquiries about the EKSIG track, please contact nithikul.nimkulrat@artun.ee

Call for Proposals: DHN 2018

Digital Humanities in the Nordic Countries calls for submissions for its 2018 conference in Helsinki, Finland, 7–9 March 2018.

In 2018, the conference seeks to extend the scope of digital humanities research covered, both into new areas, as well as beyond the Nordic and Baltic countries. In pursuit of this, in addition to the abstracts familiar from humanities traditions, we also adopt a call for publication ready texts as is the tradition in computer science conferences. Therefore, we accept the following types of submissions:

  1. Publication ready texts of length appropriate to the topic. Accepted papers will be submitted to the CEUR-WS proceedings series for publication in a citable form. Layout for the papers is not absolutely mandated, but we suggest you use the Springer LNCS templates to ensure a uniform look for the proceedings.
    – Long paper: 8-12 pages, presented in 20 min plus 10 min for Q&A
    – Short paper: 4-8 pages, presented in 10 min plus 5 min for Q&A
    – Poster/demo: 2-4 pages, presented as an A1 academic poster in a poster session.
  2. Abstracts of a maximum of 2000 words. Proposals are expected to indicate a preference between a) long, b) short, or c) poster/demo format for presentation. Approved abstracts will be published in a book of abstracts on the conference website.

Submissions to the conference are now open at ConfTool!

Im­port­ant dates
The call for proposals opened on 28 August 2017, and the deadline for submitting proposals is 25 October 2017. Presenters will be notified of acceptance by 8 January 2018. For papers accepted into the citable proceedings, there is an additional deadline of 5 February 2018 for producing a final version of your paper that takes into account the comments made by the reviewers.

This year, the conference welcomes in particular work related to the following themes:

History

While the number of researchers describing themselves as digital historians is increasing, computational approaches to history have rarely captured the attention of those without innate interest in digital humanities. To address this, we particularly invite presentations of historical research whose use of digital methods advances the overall methodological basis of the field.

Cultural Heritage

Libraries, galleries, archives and museums are making vast amounts of cultural heritage openly digitally available. However, tapping into these resources for research requires cultivating co-operation and trust between scholars and heritage institutions, due to the cultural, institutional, legal and technical boundaries crossed. We invite proposals describing such co-operation – examples of great resources for cultural heritage scholarship, of problems solved using such data, as well as e.g. intellectual property rights issues.

Games

Humanities perspectives on games are an established part of the game studies community. Yet their relationship with digital humanities remains undefined. Digitality and games, digital methods and games, games as digital methods, and so on are all areas available for research. We invite proposals that address high-level game concepts like “fun”, “immersion”, “design”, “interactivity”, etc positioned as points of contact with the digital.

Future

We also invite proposals in the broad category of ”Future”. Accepted proposals will still fit in the overall context of the conference and highlight new perspectives to the digital humanities. Submissions may range from applications of data science to humanities research to work on human-machine interaction and ecological digital humanities. We also welcome reflections on the future of the digital humanities, as well as the societal impact of the humanities.

Finally, the overarching theme this year is Open Science. This pragmatic concept emphasises the role of transparent and reproducible research practices, open dissemination of results, and new forms of collaboration, all greatly facilitated by digitalisation. All proposals are invited to reflect on the benefits, challenges, and prospects of open science for their own research.

Call for work­shops/pan­els and tu­tori­als
In addition to individual papers, the conference calls for interested parties to submit proposals for workshops/panels and tutorial sessions to be held preceding the conference. Workshops/panels gather together participants around a particular subtopic, while tutorials present a useful tool or method of interest to the digital humanities community. Either can take the form of either a half or a full day session, and they generally take place the day prior to the conference.

Proposals should include the session format, title, and a short description of its topic (max 2000 words) as well as the contact information of the person/s responsible. Proposals should also include the following: intended audience, approximate number of participants, and any special technical requirements.

Submit your workshop/tutorial at the conference ConfTool.

 

MORE AT: https://www.helsinki.fi/en/helsinki-centre-for-digital-humanities/dhn-2018/call-for-proposals?

Surveillance beyond borders and boundaries

Call for Papers for a conference organised by the Surveillance Studies Network in Aarhus (Denmark) 7 – 9 June 2018. This will be their 8th conference.

Call for Papers for a conference organised by the Surveillance Studies Network in Aarhus (Denmark) 7 – 9 June 2018. This will be their 8th conference; the banner above is ripped from their 6th in 2014.

You can download the full CfP (from which I’ve extracted the details below) here.

SURVEILLANCE BEYOND BORDERS AND BOUNDARIES

Recent years have witnessed the increasing scope, reach and pervasiveness of surveil- lance. It now operates on a scale ranging from the genome to the universe. Across the spheres of private and public life and the spaces between, surveillance mediates, documents and facilitates a wide range of activities. At the same time, surveillance practices now reach beyond the corporal and temporal boundaries of life itself, no longer resting on the individual as subject, but instead falling both within and beyond it. This emphasises the porosity of such categories. Pervasive surveillance produces new articulations of power and animates ows of people, information and capital, harbouring potential for myriad opportunities as well as harms. With this growth of surveillance comes in- creasing complexity and paradox.

Within this milieu, these issues are particularly pronounced, controversial and prescient in relation to borders and boundaries. Surveillance practices have long been associated with shoring up territorial and categorical borders, yet in the digital age such practices become accelerated, in many cases beyond the speed of human comprehension. Highly dynamic inscriptions of difference, abnormality and undesirability are now commonplace. At the same time, surveillance practices transcend and challenge erstwhile articulations of borders and boundaries, including enabling mobility for some, uniting formerly fractured assemblies of information and the capacitating borderless passage of data.

The conference

Since 2004 the Biennial Surveillance Studies Network conference has become established as the world’s most significant gathering of surveillance studies experts. The Surveillance Studies Network is a registered charitable company dedicated to the study of surveillance in all its forms, and the free distribution of scholarly information, and con- stitutes the largest association of surveillance scholars in the world. The Surveillance Studies Network owns the leading surveillance-focused peer-reviewed journal Surveillance & Society, which has held long association with the conference. We encourage presenters to submit fully formed papers to the journal to be considered for publication.

We call for papers and panels from all areas of critical enquiry that seek to examine such complex articulations and impacts of surveillance in contemporary society. We invite participants to discuss, develop or demolish the borders and boundaries of surveillance. In particular, we welcome interventions that are truly interdisciplinary, multi-disciplinary, or transdisciplinary in scope and reach, from academics, activists, artists, and policy-makers, especially those who sit on the borderlands between academia and practice-based knowledge production.

Key themes include, but are not limited to:
Authority, democracy and surveillance
Surveillance and everyday life
History of surveillance
Surveillance and digital/social media
Art, action and surveillance
Surveillance infrastructures and architectures
Managing borders and uncertainty
Theories of surveillance
Ethics, philosophy, trust and intimacy in and of surveillance
Regulation, politics and governance of surveillance
Algorithmic surveillance and big data
Resistance to surveillance
Non-technological and interpersonal surveillance

Paper Proposals

Paper sessions will be composed by the Organising Committee based on the individual Paper Proposals submitted. Paper Proposals should consist of: Name(s) of Author(s); Affiliation(s) of Author(s); Proposed Title of Paper; An abstract of up to 150 words.

On acceptance paper proposers will be invited to submit an extended abstract, presentation summary, paper outline or developed paper draft of at least 2000 words for publication in the delegates area of the conference website ahead of the event. This can be submitted anytime up until the May deadline.

Visual or other artistic submissions

We welcome and encourage alternative formats, including but not limited to visual dis- plays and other artistic installations. These may include but are not limited to lms, documentaries, photographic exhibitions, architectural modeling and digital-mediated artistic forms. Artistic submissions should consist of: Name(s) of proposer/artist; Affiliation(s); An overview of the proposed submission of up to 250 words.

Panel Proposals

Panels are sessions that bring together a diverse group of panelists with varied views on a topic related to the conference theme. The session format should engage the panelists and audience in an interactive discussion. Panels should be designed to fit in a 90-minute session. Panel Proposals should consist of: Name(s) of Organiser(s); Affiliations; Proposed Title of Panel; An abstract of up to 300 words describing the panel, including why the panel is of interest to the conference, and the proposed format of the panel; Name(s) and Affiliation(s) and abstracts for all included papers (150 words) of all proposed panelists. Speakers included in successful panel proposals also will be required to later submit the more developed extended abstract, presentation summary, paper outline or developed paper draft of at least 2000 words as per the instructions for paper proposals above. NB: Organisers must secure the agreement of all proposed panelists before submitting the Panel Proposal.

Deadline

All proposals should be submitted by December 31st 2017.  Decisions will be returned by January 31st 2018.

 

All extended outlines/presentation summaries/paper drafts to be submitted by May 1st 2018

Submissions should be made through the EasyChair submission webportal here.

 

Contact: ssn2018@cc.au.dk

 

Niklas Kullström

CfP: Helsinki Photomedia Conference 2018

Call for Papers

Helsinki Photomedia 2018

March 26 -28, 2018
Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland

helsinkiphotomedia.aalto.fi

Deadline for 500 word abstracts: October 31, 2017

Theme: Reconsidering the “Post-truth Condition”: Epistemologies of the photographic image.

Contemporary photography takes place in a world where the relation between facts and values is a social and political issue which has repercussions in art and education as well. The public discussions on information warfare, fake news and manipulated media contents have shaken the epistemology of news media and generally revitalized the questions of trustfulness of media representations. Problematic statements about the ‘post-truth condition’ symptomatically reflect this situation and pose new challenges to our understanding of the epistemology of the photographic image.

It is vital to reconsider the ‘post-truth condition’ as a discursive and imaginary formation. This implies that its claims cannot be taken at face value. At the same time, however, as a socially seducing phenomenon, it arranges new settings for old questions of photographic knowledge, authenticity, veracity and truthfulness. It postulates a political and social terrain where photographic images circulate and participate in the formation of socially efficient visual knowledge.

Hence, the controversial notion of post-truth actualizes questions of the quality of photographic information, knowledge and data. Rich in detail, photographs are able to communicate in a constative, laconic manner. Photographs are “dense data” and their mute appearances are malleable material for various information structures.

Helsinki Photomedia 2018 invites critical examinations, artistic reflections and presentations of educational projects of photography after the ‘post-truth condition’, especially work which addresses the variety of ends that photographic truth, authenticity, indexicality, manipulation and suspicion have to stand for. Photomedia 2018 will take up the multifaceted question concerning the photographic epistemology by focusing on topics including (but not limited to):

  • Evidence and testimony
  • Photography and knowledge
  • Technical aspects of photographic data
  • Visual information and counter-information
  • Strategies of authentication
  • Photography and education

 

———

Keynote speakers 2018:

Professor Robert Hariman (Northwestern University)

Professor John Lucaites (Indiana University)

Professor Barbie Zelizer (University of Pennsylvania)

Artist Keynote Professor Walid Raad (The Cooper Union, NYC)

Hariman and Lucaites are authors of The Public Image, Photography and Civic Spectatorship (2016) and No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy (2007).

Zelizer’s work on photography includes the books About to Die: How News Images Move the Public (2010) and Remembering to Forget: Holocaust Memory through the Camera’s Eye (2000).

Artist keynote speaker Walid Raad is a contemporary media artist who’s works include The Atlas Group project about the contemporary history of Lebanon.

———
Helsinki Photomedia is a biennial photography research conference organized by four Finnish universities since 2012. The conference offers various platforms where artistic, philosophical, social, cultural, economical and technological approaches to photography meet. We welcome submissions from all areas of photography research. Since 2016 photography education has been one of the areas and we welcome submissions for the educational panel for presenting educational projects and related research. The conference language is English.

Important dates:

31 October 2017 – Deadline for submissions (500 word abstracts) by 23.59 Finnish time (UCT +2:00)

1 December 2017 – Notifications of Acceptance

1 March 2018 – Deadline for Registration

26–28 March 2018 – Conference in Helsinki

———

helsinkiphotomedia.aalto.fi

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: Radical Relevances 2018

We invite researchers and artists straddling multiple (or within one) disciplines to submit papers and artworks that go beyond the rational and explore what is relevant to lived experience.

FIRST GLOBAL RADICAL RELEVANCES CONFERENCE
25.–27.4.2018, Aalto University, Espoo, Finland

Radical Relevances is a peer reviewed multidisciplinary journal and conference addressing complex global phenomena of our time, such as climate change, biodiversity, income inequality, and mass migration.
We invite researchers and artists straddling multiple (or within one) disciplines to submit papers and artworks that go beyond the rational and explore what is relevant to lived experience.

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

The First Global Radical Relevances Conference asks: How do economic, social, and cultural practices reflect the global uncertainty of today with its shifting geopolitics and environmental realities? How to engage in new ways of thinking about and practicing in terms of human and nonhuman co-existence and flourishing in the midst of vast predictable and unpredictable planetary transformations? How to study the relevances of certain objective realities that nevertheless escape the sensory equipment of an individual?

We call for social and natural scientists, artists, philosophers and activists to go beyond the rational or rationalized to the actual relevances underlying human activity. Such a focus requires not only more attention to everyday life, but also novel methodologies and research designs. We call for thinking about how to mobilize objectively relevant ideas to people so that these become relevant in their everyday life – at both work and home. The conference aims at serious de-normalization of the status quo, yet even more importantly, to explore, formalize, and theorize answers and resolutions to the urgent and massive problems that humanity and the planet face.

The theme for this first conference is open. However, if possible, our interests converge towards two, seemingly unconnected topics: the Arctic region and health-beyond-human. Melting ice caps on Greenland not only dislodge natural resources to mining, drilling and damming, but NATO camps formerly buried by ice now exude toxins into the thawed flows. Inuit women – sharing a similar fate with the ice bear, another large carnivore mammal from the same region – have the largest amounts of heavy metals in their mother’s milk. In addition to the melting ice, global winds converge pollutants from the rest of the world to Greenland and the Arctic Sea. Indeed, we learn from the Inuit and the ice-bear that on this planet, there is no remoteness, no outside.

Submission forms

1. ESSAY SUBMISSIONS
Please submit your long abstract (of 1000 – 1500 words) or short paper (max 3000 words) to info@radicalrelevances.com by 30th of September, 2017. Please include any images, tables, or diagrams at low resolution at this phase. Please state Title, Author(s), and Email Address. Upon acceptance to conference we ask you to submit a full paper of max 8000 words.

2. ART AND OTHER SUBMISSIONS
You may also submit works in other forms – for instance, a poster, performance, workshop, or an intervention. Tell us about the work you would like to present and we will be in touch with you to find appropriate ways to include it in the limited settings of our conference. Please submit your proposal (max 1500 words) to info@radicalrelevances.com by 30th of September, 2017. Please include images only at low resolution at this phase. If applicable, add links to online video and/or audio material. Please state Title, Author(s) and/or Artist(s), and Email Address.

ACCEPTANCE TO THE CONFERENCE notification at the latest 1st of November 2017

Accepted contributors, please note that a registration fee of 100 euros is required from affiliated scholars and artists with funding. No registration fee is expected from non-affiliated scholars and artists.
We grant a limited amount of travel stipends to non-affiliated scholars and artists coming without funding from outside Europe. To inquire more about such a grant, please contact us.

Radical Relevances Conference Team:

Pia Lindman, Professor of Environmental Art
Ossi Ollinaho, Doctor of Science (Technology)
Tim Smith, Postdoctoral Researcher
Kasperi Mäki-Reinikka, coordinator, Doctoral Candidate

For more information, please email:
info@radicalrelevances.com
Radical Relevances website

Job Call: Two Tenure-track Assistant Professor positions at Syracuse University in Communication, Culture, and Digital Technologies

The Department of Communication and Rhetorical Studies at Syracuse University seeks two tenure-track assistant professors in Communication, Culture, and Digital Technologies. Appointment begins August 2018. Ideally, candidates will possess research and teaching expertise in critical media studies, transnational media studies, transmedia studies, and/or multi-modal discourse analysis. Applicants should complement the department’s current strengths in Rhetoric, Critical Cultural Studies, Performance Studies, and Discourse Analysis. PhD in communication or a related field must be completed by August, 2018, with superior training and exceptional promise for long-term outstanding research, teaching, and service. With primary expertise established, we welcome specific research and teaching interests from subfields including but not limited to political, organizational, legal, popular, interpersonal, and/or family communication. We seek ambitious emergent scholars with demonstrated success in undergraduate teaching who are also qualified to teach and mentor students in a highly competitive graduate program, and who are deeply invested in the discipline of communication studies. The successful candidates will teach undergraduate and graduate courses in the areas of communication, culture, and digital technology, and develop courses in their areas of specialty; candidates will also engage in MA thesis supervision and service to the Department, College, and University. The Department prides itself on having one of the strongest MA programs in the discipline and in hiring for this position it wishes to strengthen an already growing program with great reputation and potential.

Review of applications will begin on October 15, 2017 and continue until the positions are filled.
For more information and to apply visit https://www.sujobopps.com (JOB#073484)
Syracuse University is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer with a strong commitment to equality of opportunity and a diverse work force. Members of underrepresented groups are strongly encouraged to apply.

Contact Rachel Hall (rchall01@syr.edu) for more information.