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Events

Events include conferences, workshops, lectures, seminars, and exhibits (all of which are listed below in chronological order).

Edited by Bart Jan Koning

Updated June 17, 2008

Inclusive Science: Articulating Theory, Practice, and Action

[added: 10/16/2007]
16-18 June, 2008 | St. Paul, MN, USA
Deadline: 15 January, 2008
The conference will focus on three intersections of science and feminism: 1) Multiple Frameworks: critiques of science from multiple perspectives including gender, race and ethnicity, and class; 2) Pedagogies that engage women, students of color, and students from a variety of social classes in the sciences, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM); 3) Transformation: putting theory into action; changing the way we do, learn, and teach about science.

These are areas in which there has been a great deal of scholarly activity, and yet few opportunities to exchange information, assess where we are, and determine where we need to go. This conference is designed to help scholars in and of the sciences share knowledge and ideas; develop strategies for disseminating their theory, pedagogies, and activism; and discuss ways to go forward (this may include becoming a society with members and annual meetings and maybe even a journal). We plan to include ample opportunity for dialog through innovative participatory sessions and intentionally scheduled time for informal conversations. So, put the dates on your calendar and think about networking with colleagues, sharing/discussing your work or hosting a session, and transforming the way we do and think about science.
http://www.stkate.edu/inclusive_science

4th International Conference on e-Social Science

[added: 12/11/2007]
18-20 June, 2008 | Manchester, UK
Deadline: 25 January, 2008
The aim of the conference on e-Social Science is to bring together leading international representatives of the social science, e-Infrastructure/ cyberinfrastructure and e-Research communities in order to improve mutual awareness, harmonize understanding and instigate coordinated activities to accelerate research, development and deployment of powerful, new research methods and tools for the social sciences and beyond.
http://www.ncess.ac.uk/events/conference/call/

Ethics, Technology, and Identity

[added: 11/13/2007]
18-20 June, 2008 | Delft/The Hague, Netherlands
Deadline: 7 December, 2007
This conference aims to discuss the theme of 'ethics and identity' in light of new (information) technology.

Information technology plays an increasingly important role in society and in human lives. Identity Management Technologies (e.g. biometrics, profiling, surveillance), in combination with a variety of identification procedures and personalized services are ubiquitous and pervasive. This calls for careful consideration and design of collecting, mining, storing and use of personal information.

Access, rights, responsibilities, benefits, burdens and risks are apportioned on the basis of identities of individuals. These identities are formed on the basis of personal data collected and stored and manipulated in databases. This raises ethical questions, such as obvious privacy issues, but also a host of identity related moral questions concerning (the consequences of) erroneous classifications and the limits of our capacity for self-presentation and self definition.
http://www.ethicsandtechnology.eu/ETI

Routes into the Future: New Maps for the Social and Human Sciences

[added: 19/03/2008]
18-21 June, 2008 | Coimbra, Portugal
To celebrate its 30 years, the Centre for Social Studies (CES) of the School of Economics of the University of Coimbra is promoting a wide reflection on the relations, dialogues and tensions which currently stamp the heterogeneous domain of the Social and Human Sciences (SHS) and their diverse contexts of development. Such contexts can be distinct both at geographical level (national, regional and global), and at the level of their social impact (relevance, contribution towards public policies, and relations with the Natural Sciences and the technologies).
http://www.ces.uc.pt/routesintofuture/index.php

CAPTURING PROTEUS: Technoscience and Knowledge Society in Europe

[added: 19/03/2008]
19-21 June, 2008 | Genoa, Italy
Deadline: 31 March, 2008
The second STS-Italia General Conference is named after Proteus, the Greek god able of a thousand metamorphoses, so to escape from those waiting for his prophecy. Technoscience in contemporary society is like Proteus: it saturates the whole social reality, being at the same time invisible, undistinguishable, impossible to capture. Technoscientific products are not confined to laboratories anymore, but they enter our bodies, workplaces, the way we communicate and we inhabit our spare time. Science and technology have become a unique device, deeply integrated into the economic system of production, and all those elements -- basic research, applied research, development, technological innovation -- separately framed within a linear system of analyis, are now inextricably intertwined. The suggestion is to look at the so called 'knowledge society' focusing on its technoscientific processes and devices, from the viewpoint of different disciplinary perspectives and aspects of the phenomenon as a standpoint.
http://www.stsitalia.org/

ICTs Bridging Cultures? Theories, Obstacles, Best Practices - 6th International Conference on Cultural Attitudes towards Technology and Communication (CATaC08)

[added: 07/25/2007]
24-27 June 2008 | Nîmes, France
Deadline: 14 January, 2008
The biennial CATaC conference series – 10 years old in 2008! – provides a premier international forum for current research on how diverse cultural attitudes shape the implementation and use of information and communication technologies (ICTs). The conference series brings together scholars from around the globe who provide diverse cultural and disciplinary perspectives in their presentations and discussions of the conference theme and topics (listed below).
http://www.catacconference.org/

1st Workshop on Imagining Business: Reflecting on the Visual Power of Management, Organising and Governing Practices

[added: 09/10/2007]
26-27 June, 2008 | Oxford, UK
Deadline: 28 February, 2008
Organizations are saturated with images, pictures, and signs that impact on many different aspects of everyday organizational life. A moment of reflection can produce a long list of examples relating to: budgets and accounting tools, advertising literature, design specifications, public relations leaflets, standard operating procedures, schedules, reports, graphs, charts, organizational hierarchies, and maps, to name but a few. This raises the question of how we study the role of images in performing all kinds of activities that keep us busy and attentive? Do we focus on images as signs and inscriptions that can be viewed as mediators making others do things (Latour, 2005)? How does this relate to ideas of intensities, affect, engagement, beliefs and passions? Can we explore the difference and multiplicity that underlies such performances in terms of techniques and practices of managing and organizing, and how do images relate to various issues of agency, accountability and responsibility? Furthermore, imagination as representation is not the focus of this call. Rather than limiting the debate to the role that images have in representing ‘businesses’ of all sorts, we need to explore the role of images as forces in performing business, and enabling possibilities in terms of thinking about and enacting particular orderings.
http://www.eiasm.org/frontoffice/event_announcement.asp?event_id=555

Constructing/Contesting Mobilizations: Biopolitics, Activism and Identity

[added: 04/13/2008]
27 June, 2008 | Lancaster, UK
Deadline: 1 May, 2008
The aim of the workshop is to examine two interrelated questions: how should we conceptualise forms of patient and public activism associated with health, medicine and science? Do these forms of activism entail the substantiation of new collective forms of identity and what challenges do these pose for thinking about politics and identity more broadly?
Accounts of contemporary biopolitics describe a significant historical shift away from the state as the guarantor of health to the emergence of multiple actors mobilising around health, medicine and the promises of science. How
we understand these actors as constituting particular forms of collective social action is highly contested. One perspective has tended to highlight questions about how actors mobilise, create and draw on resources, establish
organisational structures, and seek to influence the political and scientific agenda. Another perspective prefers to highlight the way these actors represent new forms of sociality and are creating new forms of collective identity. This workshop will examine these two perspectives.
http://www.genomicsnetwork.ac.uk/cesagen/events/workshops/title,3446,en.html

IFIP WG 9.5 International Working Conference on Virtuality and Society: Massive Virtual Communities

[added: 08/20/2007]
1-2 July, 2008 | Lueneburg, Germany
Deadline: 15 January, 2008
Prominently within the gaming community, but also within other communities on the internet, very huge virtual communities begin to evolve. In games, an average number of people that is comparable to a smaller city is online at the same time, thus forming a proper society. People share their pictures and videos, they meet and date in virtual communities. In Second Life, even big companies start virtual branches to enhance customer relations. It is likely that this phenomenon will become even more significant in the near future for gaming, for business and private purposes, maybe even for administrative and political functions.
http://www.leuphana.de/ifip_mass_virt_comm

Ethnographies of Gender and Globalization

[added: 11/13/2007]
3-4 July, 2008 | Amsterdam, Netherlands
Deadline: 1 February, 2008
Globalization is the result of the rapid exchange of ideas, peoples, goods, capital, information and technologies, and the general compression of distances and time. Globalization processes have a large impact on people's everyday lives. Even in the most remote parts of the world, people and locations are being connected to each other. This interconnectedness can be seen as the core feature of globalization. In turn, people respond to new challenges and opportunities offered by globalization. Their daily actions produce, transform and determine the specific directions that globalization processes may take.

The last decade, anthropology and other social sciences have produced an impressive body of literature on globalization. Globalization from a gender perspective, however, is still an exciting and innovative area to explore. Gender and feminist anthropology is a discipline par excellence that can make understandable how globalization and everyday life are interrelated, especially through its ethnographical methodology. Feminist scholarship has shown that globalization is not a gender-neutral phenomenon. Globalization has different outcomes for women and men. It challenges them in different ways and offers them different opportunities. Gender constructions shape globalization processes, which in turn confirm, construct and change gender notions. These developments result in profound changes in family life, family composition, cultural expressions, gender relations, and the way people interact with each other.
http://www.lovanetwerk.nl/

Public Space and Social Cohesion in the City

[added: 09/10/2007]
3-4 July, 2008 | St. Petersbourg, Russia
Deadline: 15 December, 2007
Urban public space continues to be the focus of debate as to its conceptualisation, interrogation and its design and production. In particular, urban public space is increasingly being considered as, on the one hand, productive of a new set of exclusions in the city, but also, on the other, as offering a range of possibilities for the co-existence of strangers in the city. As cities increasingly become the site of multiple cultures and undergo new rounds of regeneration they are also seen as key locus in which new forms of sociability may emerge as part of cosmopolitan urban imaginaries in which 'public space' is considered vital, particularly through the promotion of innovative urban design, new architectural developments and the management of public space, but also in the form of more marginal or 'loose' spaces. However, cities are also sites of a variety of types of 'public' spaces which are 'gated', guarded, surveilled and managed with the effect that access to public space is restricted for certain social groups. Central to these tensions are continuing debates over the meaning of 'public space' and how these link to authority and special (reginal, national, local) politics conducted on behalf of particular forms of publicness.
sv.hristova@aix.swu.bg

7th International Crossroads in Cultural Studies Conference Cultural Studies Initiative (Crossroads 2008)

[added: 02/12/2007]
3-7 July, 2008 | Kingston Jamaica, W.I.
Deadline: 30 June, 2007
Being a site of conquest, dislocation, crossings, enslavement and rebellion, but also of memory and survival, hope of return, culture- building, in-between-ness, and immense creativity and heritage, the Caribbean is a relevant site for hosting the 7th International Crossroads in Cultural Studies Conference, under the theme Of Sacred Crossroads.

Contemporary emphasis on materialism and consumerism as measures of our humanity, arising from the unbridled excesses to which science and technology have been sometimes put, is of growing concern, putting under duress the intangibles embodied in the values by which we live as human beings. Out of these concerns has sprung deepening dialogue at the interface between science and spirituality. UNESCO’s celebration of the intangible heritage of humankind is a timely reminder that civilizations rise not only on great edifices, monuments and artefacts that defy time, but also on those moments of ‘livity’, or human relationships, that last only as long as they are lived, without which human life would have little meaning.
http://www.crossroads2008.org/

Summer school medicine and new media

[added: 19/03/2008]
7-11 July, 2008 | Coventry, UK
Deadline: 30 June, 2007
Medicine and New Media, the first postgraduate Summer School organized by the Centre for the History of Medicine at the University of Warwick, will explore the history of medical imaging from the Renaissance to present times. Participants will trace technological developments and their consequences in medicine, alongside consideration of how these new ways of ‘seeing’ the human body reflected and were shaped by the concerns of scientists, physicians, artists, and the general population.
http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/chm/activities/summerschool

24th EGOS Colloquium "Upsetting Organizations": Unsettling Technology and Accountability

[added: 10/16/2007]
10-12 July, 2008 | Amsterdam, Netherlands
Deadline: 13 January, 2008
Submissions are invited to the "Unsettling Technology and Accountability" sub-theme of the European Group for Organizational Studies colloquium. The session aims to examine the processes of unsettling and upsetting by exploring the relation between 'technology' and 'accountability'.

The scope of the sub theme includes, but is not limited to, the following questions: 1) How is the relation between technology and accountability currently understood? What do the diverse understandings of accountability add to our understanding of technology? 2) In what sense do technologies form part of accountability procedures and rituals? 3) What do we know of the practices through which actors and organizations attempt to technologise accountability and/or to make technologies accountable? 4) How are accountability and technology intertwined through instrumentality, mechanical objectivity, calculability and utility? 5) Can technology-accountability relationships help us understand the creation of market relations, institutions, organisational identities and innovations?
http://www.egosnet.org/conferences/collo24/sub_39.shtml

2008 IEEE International Professional Communication Conference (IPCC 2008): Opening the Information Economy

[added: 09/17/2007]
13-16 July, 2008 | Montreal, CAN
Deadline: 15 October, 2007
The information economy is based on the collection and the exchange of data and ideas. We all either contribute to or use materials from the information economy in most aspects of our everyday lives. As a result, the information economy exists as an environment in which we are all contributors and consumers. Within this system, effective communication is essential to success, allowing individuals to contribute ideas and information effectively and to make efficient use of the goods and services. Few of us, however, understand all of the nuances of the information economy or the communication factors that affect its operations.

This conference seeks to examine or to "open" this economic model by examining the connections between communication practices and the products, practices, and services that constitute the information economy. The objective of such an examination will be to help attendees better understand and participate in the information economy as both contributors and consumers.
IPCC2008@gmail.com

Workshop: The Entanglement of East and West in Technology and Natural Sciences in the 20th Century

[added: 04/03/2007]
18-20 July, 2008 | Passau, Germany
Deadline: 10 June, 2007
Increasingly intensified scientific research in Modern Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries became a global key phenomenon of conceptions of modern life. Old Empires, new nation states as well as the Soviet Union developed strategies and institutions in competition with one another for the advancement of science and its cultural, economic and political exploitation.

Scientific logic has always contradicted political borders and demands transnational co-operation. In various disciplines, international research standards and competition have remained the leveller. Important scientific developments evolved over the 20th century as well, across the state borders and ideological camps of a divided Europe. International conferences, journals, associations, awards (Nobel Prize etc.) or competitions (International Mathematical Olympiad etc.) created cultural practices of scientific co-operation and constituted sometimes durable social relationships and networks. Yet although in some fields, the friendly exchange of letters, the exchange of know-how, the transfer of technologies or shared projects emerged, in other areas ideological prescriptions narrowed the scientist's room for manoeuvre.
Stefan.Rohdewald@uni-passau.de

Participatory Communication Research Section of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR)

[added: 12/11/2007]
20-25 July, 2008 | Stockholm, Sweden
Deadline: 31 January, 2008
The work that is presented in the Participatory Communication Research Section is not based on any specific definition of participation. Rather, participation is a term used to refer to a variety of social and planning processes that occur in myriad ways and in many different contexts. This Section addresses issues related to communication within community and between stakeholders who are engaged in processes of social change. The sessions are meant to work toward theoretical and methodological clarification. Therefore, both papers and statements discussing theoretical or methodological perspectives and/or documenting specific case studies are welcome.

Topics that will be considered include a wide variety of issues that relate to research in relation to processes of communication founded on participation. This includes subjects and processes of democratisation, communication and information rights, ICTs for sustainable development, health communication, environmental communication, agricultural extension services, communication for advocacy, folk media and social movements, communication planning activities and interventions, national and cultural identities, community studies and the relationship between participation, empowerment and gender, community radio and participatory video production, non-formal participatory forms of education, participatory rapid appraisals, participatory action research, and so on.
Rico.Lie@wur.nl and pradip.thomas@uq.edu.au
http://www.jmk.su.se/iamcr2008

Graduate Student Workshop: Values in Computer and Information System Design

[added: 01/14/2008]
8-16 August, 2008 | Santa Clara, CA, USA
Deadline: 15 January, 2008
We invite applications for a one week NSF sponsored workshop on emerging approaches to the study of values in computer and information systems. Funding is available to help support students’ travel, accommodation, and subsistence.

Students will cover a diverse canon of works on technology and values, and design and design methodologies promoting a broad understanding of what “good” systems are. Guest faculty, including major theorists and design practitioners, will lead discussions and share their own work.
http://www.scu.edu/sts/VID/welcome.cfm

The Minds of Animals: Conceptions from the Humanities, Sciences, and Popular Culture

[added: 10/16/2007]
12-13 August, 2008 | Toronto, Canada
Deadline: 15 December, 2007
The minds of animals fascinate us. Scientific reports about animal minds receive extensive press coverage. Literature abounds with stories about and from the point of view of animals. And popular culture elaborates diverse interpretations of the psychological meanings of animal behavior. Theories of animal consciousness inform all academic and public discourse about human ethical responsibility toward animals.

We envision having an international symposium on conceptions of animal minds covering two days, with 12 speakers each day. Speakers will cover diverse topics: scientific attempts to understand the minds of animals; historical, literary and artistic representations of the minds of animals; the ways in which the minds of animals are presented in the popular media and by special interest groups; and the working assumptions about animal minds of those who live in close interaction with animals.
robert.mitchell@eku.edu and smithj@uww.edu

Ways of Knowing the Field: International Conference on the History of Fieldwork, Cartography and Scientific Exploration

[added: 02/19/2008]
13-15 August, 2008 | Copenhagen, Denmark
Deadline: 1 March, 2008
Since the 19th century, standards of credibility, objectivity and accountability have been defined according to ideals manifested in the carefully composed framework of the scientific laboratory. Fieldwork and cartography, on the other hand, are by definition conducted in intimate, unpredictable and unorganized interaction with particular places and with local actors that influence, shape and to some degree may even create end results.

While this may have earned knowledge produced in the field a reputation for being further removed from the scientific ideal set up by the laboratory standards, fieldwork remains a crucial tool for making the world knowledgeable. Traditionally, fieldwork, field studies and field sciences have served as collective designations for a host of heterogeneous of practices related to the collection and production of data, objects, maps and meaning. Measuring, counting, mapping, excavating, interviewing and experimenting – such activities have all been conducted ‘in the field’ in order to provide information and material thus transformed into objects for technological or scientific processing elsewhere.
http://www.fieldstudies.dk/107581/

Gordon Research Conference on Science and Technology Policy: "Governing Emerging Technologies"

[added: 11/13/2007]
17-22 August, 2008 | Big Sky, MT, US
Deadline: 7 January, 2008
As with most scientific conferences, poster sessions are often where new data and major projects are first presented. Posters by researchers at all professional levels – from early career scholars, including graduate students, to accomplished researchers – are an integral part of the GRC on STP. Poster presenters will engage in conversation about their posters with more than 100 other participants during relaxed late afternoon sessions. Every attendee is welcome and encouraged to propose a poster.
http://www.grc.org/programs.aspx?year=2008&program=scipolicy

Society for the Social Studies of Science (4S) and European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST) 2008 Joint Annual Meeting

[added: 12/11/2007]
20-23 August, 2008 | Rotterdam, Netherlands
Deadline: 15 February, 2008
The theme for this conference is "Acting with science, technology and medicine". This meeting responds to some remarkable and interesting changes in the concerns of STS research. STS-approaches are no longer only relevant for understanding the production of science, technology and innovation; they also are relevant for understanding the co-production of science and technology with policy, democracy, law, and the organization of health care, among other major institutional matters. Similarly STS researchers have become increasingly involved with practices of technology development, policymaking, legal decision-making and governance in different fields, such as science and technology policy, environmental regulation, and health care. The balance between observation and participation seems to have changed in these consequential practices of ‘acting with’. Such engagement is currently a major topic of discussion within the STS field. Several workshops, editorials and special issues have already been published or are under way. The ‘acting with’, or interventionist approach is likely to have consequences for research methodologies, for researchers’ obligations toward different publics, and for the kind of products STS-researchers deliver. In addition, like other aspects of science and technology, interventions by STS researchers are themselves subject to contingencies and negotiations that can lead to unanticipated consequences. This conference provides a forum to explore responses across the broad range of disciplinary perspectives found within science, technology and innovation studies. Papers are encouraged which explore diverse aspects of: the sponsors and audiences for STS research; the constitution of and relations with research objects and participants; the influences on methodological choices; and the construction of research products.
https://4sonline.org/meeting.htm

(Re)Thinking Expertise: Spaces of Production, Performance and the Politics of Representation

[added: 01/14/2008]
27-29 August, 2008 | London, UK
Deadline: 16 January, 2008
What does it mean to "be" an expert? Although social constructionism has identified similarities between science and other social practices, recently a controversial call for a "Third Wave" of science studies (Collins & Evans, 2002) has drawn attention to the problem of Extension – the infinite regress encountered when looking for techno-scientific advice if we can no-longer tell the difference between expert and lay-knowledge. Expertise has previously been understood to be the unyielding pursuit of authoritative knowledge that is honed through practice and enforced by political and academic institutions. In this sense, the professional identities presented to the outside world are carefully crafted so as to conform and exhibit ideological norms not dissimilar to Merton’s ideals. Such readings, however, arguably present an overly romantic, simplistic, and homogenous rendering of experts and their expertise. What is needed is examination of how experts’ identities are constructed (when and by whom), how they are negotiated between actors and institutions, the historical context in which they are played out, and ultimately how they function (or don't) instrumentally to serve or suppress certain realities.
http://www.rgs.org/WhatsOn/ConferencesAndSeminars/Annual+International+Conference/Annual+International+Conference.htm

Hamburg International Conference of Logistics 2008 (HICL2008): Logistics Networks and Nodes

[added: 01/14/2008]
4-5 September | Hamburg, Germany
Deadline: 15 March, 2008
Today, there is a huge variety of logistics networks ? ranging from very simple locally oriented chains with only a few participants to internationally operating complex systems connecting firms all over the world. However, each of these networks is formed by logistics nodes connected by different types of edges. Various questions arise during the build-up and operation of these systems. In the design phase, partners have to be chosen, facilities have to be located, and connections have to be specified in a holistic way. On the operational level, logistics nodes have to be engineered, handling equipment has to be constructed, and last but not least, management systems have to be established in order to run and control operations within these networks. In recent years, logistics research has made extensive progress in the analysis of connections between different network nodes.

Unfortunately, research concerning the logistics nodes themselves and the possible means of improving them is far less advanced. Therefore, this conference focuses on the interaction of networks as well as on the improvement of logistics nodes. In practice, this all-embracing approach provides the chance to optimize logistics nodes not only based on their own requirements, but to enhance them to meet network-wide demands. In consequence, it becomes possible to adjust node design and operation to the needs of the whole supply chain. Vice versa, in a holistic improvement process the network can be constructed in such a way that the requirements posed by the nodes are taken into account.
http://www.hicl.org/

Workshop: Towards Post-Carbon Societies?

[added: 06/17/2008]

4-5 September, 2008 | Trondheim, Norway
Deadline: 20 July, 2008
The workshop is meant as an occasion to explore what ‘post-carbon societies’ might mean, and what forces of and strategies for transformation that are present, drawing on the ideas and concepts from the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS). We particularly invite contributions that focus on the present situation with respect to the production and consumption of energy, about new and/or established energy technologies, political and scientific strategies to support new renewables, the phenomenon of CCS and the involved political, economic and scientific activities, and the role of social sciences – including economics – in shaping present ways of understanding energy. Another set of important issues concern global warming as a historical and cultural phenomenon and the way government, industry and science is preparing (or not) for the consequences of a changing climate.

To explore the notion of ‘post-carbon societies’, it is important also to unpack the diverse meanings that may be given to the concept and how this relates to the broader agenda of sustainable development. ‘Hydrogen society’ has looked much like a slogan to achieve economic support for the technologies needed to produce, store and produce energy from hydrogen. Is the idea of ‘post-carbon societies’ in a similar vein basically a technical fix, that carbon-based sources of energy just are to be replaced by new renewable sources, or does the idea also involve more fundamental transformations of modern life, for example related to the development of less energy-demanding lifestyles? Or should we stop rehearsing the traditional critique of technical fixes and rather focus on what is needed to make technical fixes work?
http://www.postcarbonsocieties.net/

Classifications In Health Care Practices

[added: 12/11/2007]
5-8 September, 2008 | Barcelona, Spain
Deadline: 10 January, 2008
Classifications as shared systems to organize the representation of a knowledge domain are crucial in coordinating social activities. This became more evident since organizing processes are increasingly taking place across dispersed organizations and institutional contexts. As far as the common understanding is not provided by co-location, classifications are expected to keep patterns of action aligned.

Health care practices provide a clear example: information about patients need to travel together and beyond the patients themselves, in order to allow the consequent actions to be performed by a variety of actors (a number of physicians, nurses, pharmacists, relatives, lab technicians…). Studies have showed that classifications do not necessarily travel across different contexts without being reinterpreted or changed. They are often renegotiated locally and given a different meaning.
http://www.isa-sociology.org/barcelona_2008/

The Role of Science, Technology and Innovation in the Construction of the World of the Future

[added: 11/13/2007]
5-8 September, 2008 | Barcelona, Spain
Deadline: 30 November, 2007
RC23 seeks a dialogue among scholars to address the issues of science, technology and innovation (S, T & I), converging technologies; S, T & I in the Third World; S, T & I and gender; university research; and others in the hope of making a contribution to the understanding and guidance of S, T & I in the world.
http://dsa-ateneo.net/rc23/?p=9

Ideology and Discourse Analysis (IDA) - Rethinking Political Frontiers and Democracy in a New World Order

[added: 02/19/2008]
8-10 September, 2008 | Roskilde, Denmark
Deadline: 21 May, 2008
Over the course of the last 25 years, the Essex School in Ideology and Discourse Analysis (IDA) has established itself as an important and distinctive alternative to mainstream social science approaches. Established in 1982 by Professor Ernesto Laclau, the intellectual programme in Ideology and Discourse Analysis draws on a wide range of traditions and disciplines to develop a novel set of conceptual tools intended to enhance theoretical, empirical, and normative research.

IDA has expanded understanding of a rapidly changing world order through concretely theorising the emergence of new social configurations, covering global economic forces to 'risky' food.

Taking an anti-essentialist conception of discourse as a central theoretical category, the IDA programme draws on and engages with post-marxism, post-structuralism, psychoanalysis, post-Heideggerian phenomenology and hermeneutics, post-analytical philosophy, among others. Discourse theory, as deployed by the IDA research programme has thus come to be associated with a series of proper names, such as Marx, Gramsci, Althusser, Saussure, Barthes, Laclau and Mouffe, Lacan, Zizek, Derrida, Wittgenstein, and Foucault.
http://www.ruc.dk/isg/discourse/

Sixth International Conference on the History of Transport, Traffic and Mobility (T2M)

[added: 12/11/2007]
18-21 September, 2008 | Ottawa, Canada
Deadline: 1 March, 2008
Papers may address any aspect of the social, cultural, economic, technological, ecological and political history of transport, traffic and mobility. However, special consideration will be given to proposals related to the conference theme: Mobility and the Environment. The language of the conference is English.

Hosted by the Canada Science and Technology Museum, the 2008 conference coincides with a period of growing concern about the problematic relationship between the human desire and need for greater mobility, and the environmental consequences and challenges of this demand. Historical perspectives on this relationship offer the promise of greater clarity and understanding. To this end, we encourage proposals that explore all aspects of the issue across the full spectrum of modalities, systems, political contexts and environments. In addition, the conference theme is also intended to embrace philosophical, technical and cultural perspectives on the history of overcoming, or adapting to, the challenges of geography and climate. With respect to all of the above, the conference will also provide an opportunity to consider how important insights and ideas arising from historical research on the environment, and on issues of mobility in general, can best be shared with an interested general public.
submissions@t2m.org

The First International Conference & Exhibitions on Mobile Society (mSOCIETY 2008)

[added: 01/14/2008]
18-19 September, 2008 | Antalya, Turkey
Deadline: 1 May, 2008
Mobile Society refers to the emerging trends of the collective-life on earth driven by the technology of networked mobile phones and other mobile devices. These technologies and its fast and wide adoption is influencing the way we live in the society, we run businesses and the way we are as individuals.

The First International Conference on Mobile Society (mSociety 2008) aims to be a platform for presenting, exchanging and disseminating the newest developments, ideas, applications and services involving all aspects of practice and research in mSociety.
http://www.mgovernment.org/events/

Globelics Conference Mexico 2008

[added: 11/12/2007]
22-24 September, 2008 | Mexico City, Mexico
Deadline: 10 April, 2008
GLOBELICS (Global Network for Economics of Learning, Innovation, and Competence Building Systems) is an international network of scholars who apply the concept of "learning, innovation, and competence building system" (LICS) as their framework dedicated to the strengthening of LICS in developing countries, emerging economies and societies in transition. The research aims at locating unique systemic features as well as generic good practices to enlighten policy making relating to innovation, competence building, international competitiveness, regional development, labor market and human capital development. In an increasingly global and knowledge-based competition, management strategies need to be based upon an understanding of these framework conditions and the public policies which seek to regulate the environment.
http://globelics_conference2008.xoc.uam.mx

EU-PRIME Network of Excellence: Europe-Latin America Conference on Science and Innovation Policy

[added: 02/19/2008]
24-26 September, 2008 | Mexico City, Mexico
Deadline: 10 April, 2008
Both the Latin American and European countries recognize that innovation and knowledge are central to the future growth and vitality of their economies and the improvement of quality of life of their citizens. To be successful policies aimed at encouraging research and innovation should recognize the importance of specific institutional arrangements and adaptation to the different sectors and knowledge fields.

The Europe-Latin America Conference on Science and Innovation Policy will explore the research/knowledge base, the factual and the normative principles that inform those policies, taking account of the current dynamic international context, promoting mutual learning between the communities of researchers, analysts, R&D managers and policy makers.

The aim of the conference is: to stimulate the exchange of experiences about science, technology and innovation policies in Latin America and European countries to promote mutual learning, improve the quality of the research in the field, enhance the impact of the research in the policy making and foster the diffusion of the best practices amongst countries of Europe and Latin America, considering an adequate balance between convergence and diversity.
http://prime_mexico2008.xoc.uam.mx/

(Re)constructing the aging body:Western cultures and gender 1600-2000

[added: 12/11/2007]
26-28 September, 2008 | Mainz, Germany
Deadline: 7 January, 2008
With an ever growing proportion of elderly people in many Western societies and modern medicine promising to prolong life and well-being, the aging body has become an increasingly common image in current society. ‘Anti-aging’ has developed into a popular movement for promoting activity, mobility and life-style choice instead of conventionally held stereotypes of decline and decrepitude. Current theoretical contributions argue that the aging body cannot completely be reduced to culture and stand up for a materialistic deconstructionist perspective considering the elderly’s experiences and the interaction of mind, body and society. It is the meaning attached to gendered aging bodies by medical cultures that needs further investigation.

We welcome colleagues from a variety of disciplines who are willing to discuss cross-disciplinary angles focussing on the meanings attached to, the knowledge produced of, and the processes inherent to gendered aging bodies in the past and in contemporary Western societies.
http://www.aging-body.com/

Participatory Design Conference

[added: 12/11/2007]
30 September - 4 October, 2008 | Bloomington, IN, USA
Deadline: 15 March, 2008
The 2008 Participatory Design Conference at Indiana University (IU), hosted by the IU School of Informatics, will be the 10th PDC and a golden opportunity to reassess the achievements of the PD movement and to consider its future. We hope to broaden further the focus of PD and to consider the relevance of its traditions and commitments to the new debates over design. As the home of the first US PhD in informatics, the School of Informatics is very pleased to be hosting PDC. The Bloomington campus of Indiana University provides an excellent occasion for the Participatory Design community to extend its dialogue with leading scholars in international and global education. The campus is the site of several of the leading Area Studies programs (e.g., African Studies, East Asian Studies) in the US, as well as the so-called ‘i-school’ movement in the US. The i- or "information" schools are higher education units, typically professional schools, which are developing program that goes beyond the traditional computer science curriculum, even beyond programs in Information Technology. Several of the more that 50 i-schools were previously Schools of Library Science that now call themselves Schools of Information, Information Studies, or Informatics.
http://pdc2008.org/

Places of Knowledge: Relocating Science and Technology Studies

[added: 02/19/2008]
3-5 October, 2008 | Ithaca, NY, USA
Deadline: 30 March, 2008
In recent years, a number of scholars working under the broad rubric of Science and Technology Studies have sought to move beyond the field’s traditional focus on scientific practice carried out by credentialed experts in labs and clinics in the industrialized world. This conference invites papers including, but not limited to, the anthropology, history, and sociology of science, technology and/or medicine to consolidate and extend this work. We seek to put in dialogue analyses addressing technoscience in colonial and postcolonial contexts with work on artisanal knowledge, citizen science, and other forms of knowledge and sites of practice. We request papers that examine these places, the types of material and knowledge produced within them, and the sorts of communities and institutions that facilitate the means of knowledge production. Themes will include the nature of skills and practices in colonial and postcolonial contexts, methods of professionalization, and the production of traditional and modern places of knowledge as well as the discourse between them. We invite, in addition, papers concerned with questions of method: are there epistemological assumptions constitutive of the disciplines that have traditionally made up STS that have undermined (and/or continue to undermine) a project that aims to relocate the study of science, technology, and medicine?
tjp2@cornell.edu or ss536@cornell.edu

2008 Annual Conference of the Society for the History of Technology (SHOT): SHOT@50:LookingBeyond

[added: 01/14/2008]
11-14 October, 2008 | Lisbon, Portugal
Deadline: 14 March, 2008
The theme of last year's conference was 'SHOT@50: Looking Back.' This year's will be 'SHOT@50:LookingBeyond.'

To that end, the Program Committee seeks papers or sessions for the 2008 meeting that concern the history of technology as it may or ought to be practiced in the future. Papers or sessions devoted to the question of how we shall write the history of technology in the future are particularly encouraged. To serve the purpose of 'Looking Beyond' the Committee also appreciates papers or panels reaching out beyond SHOT's current disciplinary boundaries. The Committee will also consider papers of high quality on any aspect of the history of technology, broadly defined.
shot@em.uni-frankfurt.de

AoIR 2008 conference: Internet Research 9.0: Rethinking community, Rethinking Place

[added: 01/14/2008]
15-18 October, 2008 | Copenhagen, Denmark
Deadline: 8 February, 2008
In the past few years, new forms of net-based communities are emerging, distributed on various websites and services, and making use of several media platforms and genres to stay connected. Now, as mobile and location-based technologies are reintroducing "place" as an important aspect in the formation of communal and social activities, it is time to consider and rethink the concept of online or virtual communities. Not forgetting the lessons we have learned from studying the early virtual communities, how do we describe, analyse, theorise and design the communities and social formations of the early 21st century? How do we address the blurring of boundaries between places and communities on- and offline.
http://conferences.aoir.org/

Two Days of Canada Conference: Connecting through Media History

[added: 09/10/2007]
6-7 November, 2008 | St. Catharines, Ontario, CAN
Deadline: 1 October, 2007
Communication is central to the formation of communities and cultures. Nonetheless, our understanding of how media systems developed in Canada is highly fragmented. We think about them in many ways: as technology, certainly, but also as organizations, as cultural forms, and as the necessary infrastructure for a lively public sphere. Further, until recently we have thought of each medium as a distinct enterprise, be it publishing, sound recording, film, broadcasting, or telecommunications. These perspectives are manifest in the many academic disciplines and fields that study the media - such as Canadian Studies, Journalism, Literature, Communication, Film and History. This diversity is exciting, but can also be frustrating if scholars never encounter the work of their peers.
russell.johnston@brocku.ca

HSS 2008 Annual Meeting

[added: 02/19/2008]
6-9 November, 2008 | Pittsburgh, PA, USA
Deadline: 1 April, 2008
The History of Science Society will hold its 2008 Annual Meeting in Pittsburgh, PA in the Omni William Penn hotel (site of the 1999 annual meeting). Proposals for sessions, contributed papers, and, for the first time, posters, must be submitted by 1 April 2008 to the History of Science Society’s Executive Office. Papers that are part of a session are due no later than 8 April 2008.
http://www.hssonline.org/meeting/2008HSSCFPPitt.html

MBL/EMBO Science & Society conference: Systems and Synthetic Biology - Scientific and Social Implications

[added: 01/14/2008]
7-8 November, 2008 | Heidelberg, Germany
Deadline: 1 February, 2008
Systems and synthetic biology are emerging inter-related frontiers in early 21st century biology. While these new fields have generated much attention both within and outside the world of science, time now seems ripe for a concerted effort towards clarification of their scientific scope and relevance to society. This calls for an organized effort in collective thinking, among scientists and non-scientists alike, about the significance of work being done in systems/synthetic biology, the environment within which that work is being done, and the nature of any specific problem that may arise. It is our conviction that potential benefits, as well as societal, ethical and safety concerns, of systems/synthetic biology should be addressed from the start, so that these new fields of science can further develop in an environment of public trust.
http://www.embl.org/sciencesociety/conference2008

Mobility, the City and STS workshop

[added: 06/09/2008]

20-22 November, 2008 | Copenhagen, Denmark
Deadline: 31 August, 2008
Mobility is at the very centre of the dynamics of contemporary cities. From bikes to subways, wifi hotspots to sewage infrastructure; our cities are increasingly becoming spaces of flows through which a growing number of people, materials and information move on a daily basis. These growing levels of movement represent not only a technical challenge for planners or the increase of pollution and congestion for authorities and environmentalists. Beyond this we can observe the development of new kinds of highly complex socio-technical systems of urban mobility that radically reconfigure the practice and experience of living in cities. This situation has been acknowledged by a series of developments in the fields of urban studies, geography, sociology, anthropology, and others related areas in which the study of these multiple mobilities appear as its main subject. Even a particular area of social research and theory called “mobility studies” has been established with the explicit aim to study the mobile aspects of social life in all its complexity and heterogeneity; from everyday interactions at the local level to wider issues regarding themes like globalization, exclusion, and sustainability.
Contacts: Andrés Valderrama ava [at] ipl.dtu.dk and Sebastián Ureta sureta [at] uc.cl

The Knowledge-Based Economy (KBE): Critical Perspectives

[added: 06/17/2008]

5 – 6 February, 2009 | Graz, Austria
Deadline: October 10, 2008
Recently, the idea of the knowledge-based economy (KBE) has served as an important policy framework which has become increasingly pervasive in discussions surrounding innovations, wealth creation and competitiveness (Goding, 2006). The KBE has been particularly prominent in European policy debates since the 2000 Lisbon summit of the EU Council. Various policies have aimed to make the European Union ‘the globally most competitive knowledge-based economy’ by 2010.

We would like to invite critical perspectives and interdisciplinary approaches which examine policy issues around the KBE. Analytical questions could include the following: How has the KBE been promoted through specific discourses, languages, knowledges, institutional commitments, future visions and social identities? What linkages are made among those elements? What various accounts arise, implicitly or explicitly? How do various accounts play complementary or contradictory roles?
Contacts: Aaro Tupasela aaro.tupasela [at] helsinki.fi and Harald Rohracher, rohracher [at] ifz.tugraz.at

The Fifth International Somatechnics Conference: The Technologisation of Bodies and Selves

[added: 06/09/2008]

16-18 April, 2009 | Sydney, Australia
Deadline: 30 November, 2008
“Somatechnics” is a recently coined term used to highlight the inextricability of soma and techné, of the body (as a culturally
intelligible construct) and the techniques (dispositifs and ‘hard technologies’) in and through which bodies are formed and
transformed. This term, then, supplants the logic of the ‘and’, indicating that technés are not something we add to or apply to the
body, but rather, are the means in and through which bodies are constituted, positioned, and lived. As such, the term reflects
contemporary understandings of the body as the incarnation or materialization of historically and culturally specific discourses and practices.
http://www.somatechnics.mq.edu.au/events/

Seventh International Triple Helix Conference

[added: 05/14/2008]
17-19 June 2009 | Glasgow, United Kingdom
Deadline: 14 November, 2008
Triple Helix VII offers a multi-disciplinary forum for experts from universities, industry and government. The Conference is designed to attract leading authorities from across the world who will share their knowledge and experience, drawing a link between research, policy, and practice in sustainable development. The Conference will bring together policy-makers, academics, researchers, postgraduate students, and key representatives from business and industry.
http://www.triple-helix-7.org