Category: Conferences

CFP Technology, Knowledge and Society Conference (Buenos Aires)

Call for Papers
Twelfth International Conference on Technology and Society
The Technology and Society Conference will be held from 18-19 February 2016 at the Universidad de Buenos Aires in Buenos Aires, Argentina. We welcome submissions from a variety of disciplines and perspectives and encourage faculty and students to jointly submit proposals, discussing technology and society through one of the following themes:

Conference Themes
Technologies for Human Use
Technologies in Community
Technologies for Learning
Technologies for Common Knowledge

2016 Special Focus: Ideas, Objects, Waste: Critically Approaching The Life Cycle of Technologies in the Age of the Anthropocene
Technologies have life cycles. They begin as ideas reverberating within normative contexts of innovation and progress. These ideas then materialize as objects. This materiality connects the object to epochs of production and the natural world: metals, bio-matter and other natural resources. Finally, as their life cycle comes to a close, these objects become waste. In this final stage, another set of material impacts comes into view: their disposal as waste or our reuse of these objects for similar or different purposes. The increasing speed of this life cycle stimulates a ‘what is to be done?’ reflexivity that pervades the whole cycle. What does pace of this life cycle today reveal about us as individuals, communities or societies?

Parallel to our annual thematic streams, the Special Focus for the 12th Technology Knowledge and Society Conference – “Ideas, Objects, Waste: Critically Approaching The Life Cycle of Technologies in the Age of the Anthropocene” – will be to analyze the life cycle of technology in the context of our current ecological condition, in an era that has been coined the age of the Anthropocene. To be precise: how do we use findings of the impacts human action on the environment as an evaluative criterion assessing the ideas, objects and waste of technological developments? In turn, how can such questioning shape our understanding of the social impact of technologies, and the ideals of human needs and community interests manifest in the developmental direction and objects of technologies?

Proposal Submissions and Deadlines
The current review period closing date for the latest round of submissions to the Call for Papers (a title and short abstract) is 18 March 2015*. Please visit the conference website for more information on submitting your proposal, future deadlines, and registering for the conference.

If you are unable to attend the conference, you may still join the community and submit your article for peer review and possible publication, upload an online presentation, and enjoy subscriber access to The Technology Collection of Journals.

*Proposals are reviewed in rounds adhering to monthly deadlines. Check the website often to see the current review round.

CFP Asia Pacific Regional Intercultural Conference (Bali)

The First Asia Pacific Regional Intercultural Conference
Call for Proposals

You are invited and encouraged to participate in the AFS-AAI-SIETAR 2015 Conference on 15-17 April, 2015 in Bali, Indonesia.
Deadline for submission: January 31, 2015

The theme of this conference is: Learning to Live Together. Intercultural Education: From Ideas to Action.

Please submit proposals that explore the best thoughts on the intercultural field evidenced by theory, research or best practices. Asia Pacific regional perspectives highly appreciated. The conference review committee seeks for proposals that reflect emerging ideas, stimulate engaging discussion and learning outcomes.

The criteria for selection: Connection to the theme; Originality and Relevance to the Intercultural Learning and Education audience.

Promotion of product or service is not acceptable topic for session but sponsorship opportunities provided.

Please send submission of Abstract; Session Title; Biography of the presenter/s; Contact details and Audio-visual needs. The tracks are theory, research and best practices. Time allocations: 40 minutes for presentations or 60 minutes for panel discussion.
to : afs.aai.sietar2015@gmail.com

CFP Different Games Conference (New York)

Different Games, the first conference on inclusivity and diversity in games, invites participants for its 2015 edition at NYU’s Polytechnic School of Engineering, located in Brooklyn, NY, on Friday April 3 and Saturday April 4.

After a hugely successful 2nd year that welcomed 40 some speakers, dozens of original games and more than 300 attendees, Different Games is back for a third edition and we can’t wait to come together again this April!

Critical voices from across the games community— including designers, activists, researchers, journalists and others— are invited to present new and recent work as part of our two day program.

Submissions are invited before Feb 1, 2015 in three categories (though we welcome other ideas):

Arcade: Designers interested in showcasing their game in the Different Games arcade should submit a brief overview of their game (no more than 500 words) that includes their design vision and concept of the game. In addition, please submit the cover art and two screenshots of gameplay. We welcome pieces that will be in (beta) or playtesting phase as well as those further along in the development process.

Paper Presentations and Talks: We invite academics and creative minds alike to share recent work (written or otherwise) as speakers on our conference panels. We encourage participants from every field to submit writing or talks exploring topics pertaining to diversity and inclusion. Possible topics may include, but are not limited to: post mortems, design methodology, reflections on playtesting, analysis/commentary on games content (theme, gender, sexuality, etc.), game reception, and game culture/communities.

Breakout or Workshop Sessions: We invite topic specific or exploratory discussions on challenges and solutions for promoting diversity and inclusion in the broader game community/communities and other pertinent subjects. Hands-on workshop sessions geared towards learning design and development skills are also invited. Your proposal should include an explanation of any equipment participants will need for your workshop. If your session will be facilitated collaboratively, please include bios and links for all co-facilitators.

Visit our website for more info or to submit. Send questions to DifferentGamesConference@gmail.com.

CFP World Conference on Pluricentric Languages (Austria)

Call for Papers: World-Conference on Pluricentric Languages and their Non-Dominant Varieties
Organized by the International Working Group on Non-Dominant Varieties of Pluricentric Language (WGNDV)
July 08–11, 2015, University of Graz, Austria
Submission deadline: March 30, 2015
Notification of acceptance: April 15, 2015
Publication of papers: A volume of selected papers is to be published by Peter Lang Verlag, Frankfurt.
All papers for the conference and the publication will be peer-reviewed.

The conference will also have a section on language technology providing scholars the possibility to present their methods and approaches in corpus linguistics, natural language processing and the computational treatment of linguistic variation existing between and within national varieties.

The organizers of this 4th conference of the Working Group on Non-Dominant Varieties of Pluricentric Languages (WGNDV) would like to invite scholars from around the world to participate. The conference is devoted to the description of pluricentric languages and in particular of non-dominant national varieties of plc. languages. These are the varieties that are small by the number of their speakers and their symbolic power, and are not the primary norm-setting centres of the language. They may often be falsely attributed the status of a “dialect”, and have little or no codification of their norms. Typically, nd-varieties often have to legitimate their norms towards the dominant varieties etc. The previous conferences of the WGNDV have shown that non-dominant varieties around the world have many linguistic and sociolinguistic features in common. We would therefore like to deepen our knowledge and invite scholars from around the world to take part in the conference and give insight into the situation and features of as many nd-varieties and plc. languages as possible.

Objectives of the 4th conference:
The WGNDV wishes to continue in the line of the previous conferences and to extend the scope of its research. The main objectives of this conference are:
1.    To get more information about the situation of as many pluricentric languages and non-dominant-varieties in order to get empirically secure descriptions of effects of non-dominance.
*on the identity of their speakers,
*on the identity of their language communities,
*on the treatment of norms in written and spoken language,
*on the principles of codification and their spread to younger generations, and
*on methods in language-technology, how linguistic variation between and within national varieties and nd-varieties in particular can be treated and modelled computationally.

2.    To get exhaustive reports of the situation of as many plc. languages and nd-varieties around the world as possible and in particular of lesser known and researched plc. languages and nd-varieties like:
*Albanian, Aramaic, Aromunian, Basque, Bengali, Chinese, Croatian, Guaraní, Hebrew, Hindi/Urdu, Hungarian, Kiswahili / Swahili, Kurdish, Mapudungun, Occitan, Pashto, Punjabi, Quechua, Tamil, Romanian, Russian etc.
*ND-varieties of English in Europe, Americas, Africa and Asia;
*ND-varieties of French in Europe, Africa, Asia and America;
*ND-varieties of Spanish in the Americas and in Asia;
*ND-varieties of Portuguese in South-America, Africa and Asia;
*ND-varieties of German in Austrian, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Luxemburg; and
*Reports on the development of Russian in the former member-states of the Soviet Union

3.    To deepen the theory of plc. languages and the methods for the description of nd-varieties in particular in respect to:
*migrant varieties creating new types of pluricentricity;
*second level forms of pluricentricity within national varieties and their theoretical treatment;
*strategies for coping with language shift caused by electronic media and satellite TV spreading dominant norms to non-dominant varieties;
*the treatment of linguistic and pragmatic features of nd-varieties in education in primary and secondary schools;
*principles of codification in diglossic language communities of plc. languages, esp. the treatment of divergent linguistic forms that are common in everyday communication;
*the usage of endonormative codification strategies and their impact on the development of varieties and languages;
*measures of status planning and corpus planning etc. etc.

Important dates:
All scholars working in this field are invited to submit proposals for papers/workshops by 30th March 2015.
Notification of acceptance: 15th April 2015.

Contents of papers:
Papers (25 mins. + 5 mins. discussion) should address one or more of the above mentioned objectives of the conference as mentioned above and should thus provide:
*Information about the situation of any pluricentric language and any non-dominant-varieties in order to get empirically secure descriptions.
*To get exhaustive reports of the situation of lesser known and researched plc. languages and nd-varieties (see the list) and may be of “new” plc. languages that have not previously been identified.
*Data that deepen the theory of plc. languages and the methods for the description of nd-varieties.
*Suggestions for other topics are welcome!<

Contents of workshops:
Workshops (90 minutes long) should concern specific languages and their various non-dominant varieties, and particular methodological problems in the description of non-dominant varieties.

Abstracts:
All abstracts must be written in English and copied into the field “abstract” on the registration page or submitted via email as an attachment in Word format.
*Abstracts for 25-minutes papers should not exceed 3000 characters (1 page A4) including 4 keywords. Suggested topics for presentations can be downloaded from the conference website.
*Abstracts for 90-minutes workshops should not exceed 5000 characters (1 1/2 page A4) including 4-8 keywords. Workshop organizers should outline the overall structure of the workshop and provide names of the participants.

Conference language(s) and Sections:
The conference languages will be English and German plus the languages of the sections for specific languages if there are enough presentations to establish a section. The following sections are envisaged: English, French, German, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, a general section and a language technology section. All presentations at the conference must be written in English, although the oral presentation can be held in the language of the section.

CFP Global Exploitation Cinemas (UK)

CFP
“Global Exploitation Cinemas: Historical and Critical Approaches”, an academic conference and film event organised by the University of Lincoln (UK) in association with the forthcoming Bloomsbury book series of the same name.

University of Lincoln presents …
GLOBAL EXPLOITATION CINEMAS: HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL APPROACHES

An academic conference and film event
The historic Ritz Cinema and Theatre, Lincoln (UK), 28 and 29 May 2015

CONFIRMED KEYNOTE SPEAKERS:

Eric Schaefer (Emerson College, US)
author of Bold! Daring! Shocking! True! A History of Exploitation Films, 1919-1959 (Duke University Press, 1999)
and editor of Sex Scene: Media and the Sexual Revolution (Duke University Press, 2014)

I. Q. Hunter (De Montfort University, UK)
author of British Trash Cinema (BFI, 2012) and Cult Film as a Guide to Life (Bloomsbury, 2015).

The academy’s approach to film history has undergone a significant shift in the 21st century, with previously marginalised, despised and neglected aspects of popular film being afforded unprecedented levels of attention. This process of revaluation has occurred on a global scale, highlighting the development of rich and relatively uncharted alternative film cultures and histories, including those of “exploitation” films, and in turn enabling fresh empirical and critical methodologies.

The academic conference and film event “Global Exploitation Cinemas”-which is being funded by the University of Lincoln (UK) and is working in conjunction with the forthcoming Bloomsbury book series of the same name-aims to bring together an eclectic and diverse range of approaches to exploitation cinema, welcoming any perspective that adds to the burgeoning scholarship in this field of study. Proposals which emphasise the international dimensions of exploitation cinema are especially welcome, but the conference will remain broad and inclusive in considering topics for discussion.

Potential subjects and approaches include, but are by no means limited to:
* Critical reception and/or re-assessment
* Socio-historical dimensions and debates
* Form and aesthetics
* Global and transnational perspectives
* Sexploitation
* The pornographic feature film
* Media controversies and censorship
* Publicity and advertising
* Stardom
* Directors, writers and producers
* Movements, cycles and sub-genres
* Exhibition and distribution
* Geographies
* Restoration and re-appropriation
* Exploitation in the video age
* Nostalgia
* Publishing
* “Mainstream” infiltrations
* DVD documentaries/special features
* Festivals and conventions
* Ephemera and the collector
* The internet and participatory cultures
* Neo-exploitation in the 21st century

Abstracts (of around 300 words) and some brief biographical information (of around 50 words) should be sent no later than FRIDAY 27 FEBRUARY 2015 to the conference email. 

Organisers:
Shaun Kimber (Bournemouth University)
Neil Jackson (University of Lincoln)
Johnny Walker (Northumbria University)
Thomas Joseph Watson (Northumbria University)

CFP Communication History Conference (Venice)

CFP Bridges and Boundaries: Theories, Concepts and Sources in Communication History: An International Conference in Venice, Italy – September 16-18, 2015

The deadline for abstract submission is January 10, 2015.

Organizer: Communication History Section of the European Communication Research and Education Association (ECREA History)

Co-Sponsor: Centre for Early Modern Mapping, News and Networks (CEMMN.net) – Queen Mary University of London

Fernand Braudel in his seminal essay History and the Social Sciences: The Longue Durée pointed out that many academic disciplines/fields which study different aspects of social life inevitably encroach upon their neighbors, yet often remain in “blissful ignorance” of each other. Braudel and others have repeatedly called for historians and social scientists to overcome their deep ontological and epistemological differences in order to work together.

Despite much progress in this regard, communication history remains one of the fields where profitable interdisciplinary dialogue can still take place. Being aware of this need, the Communication History Section of ECREA invites researchers who focus on various aspects of the history of communication, media, networks and technologies (broadly defined), to come together with two main aims: 1) to explore the bridges and boundaries between disciplines; 2) to exchange ideas about how communication history is being done and how it might be done, while emphasizing theories, concepts and sources beneficial to their research, as well as emerging trends and themes.

A three-day conference will take place in Venice, one of the great hubs of early modern communication, at Warwick University’s seat in Palazzo Pesaro Papafava. The opening keynote address will be delivered by Professor Mario Infelise, a leading scholar of early modern print and journalism and the head of the graduate program in the Humanities at the University of Venice Ca’ Foscari. Instead of traditional panels and papers, the conference aims to foster dialogue among scholars of various disciplines through topically organized round-tables, master classes, and countless opportunities for informal discussions.

The organizing committee invites scholars to submit abstracts (max. 400 words) in which they address one of the main themes listed below and outline a short intervention that they might contribute to a round table on that theme. Such interventions should focus mainly on theoretical or methodological approaches, issues and experiences that the speaker has engaged with in his/her research. Historical case studies can be presented only so far as they contain a high degree of historiographical/theoretical significance. Interdisciplinary roundtable sessions will be organized in which participating scholars will also discuss questions raised by a chair and the audience, based on these proposals.

The deadline for abstract submission is January 10, 2015. The conference registration fee will be 140 euro and participants will be asked to cover their own travel expenses. Abstracts should be submitted through the conference website: http://ecreahistoryvenice2015.wordpress.com.

Main Themes:
(1) Theories and Models
Grand theories or meta-narratives often have at their core information networks and communication technologies. To what extent are theoretical premises advocated by scholars such as Braudel, Innis, McLuhan, Habermas, Luhmann, Benedict Anderson, Lefevbre – and more recently by Hallin and Mancini, Castells, Gitelman, Simonson, Mosco, Hendy, Hesmondalgh, F. Kittler, Fickers – applicable in historical inquiry? How has your own research in communication history been inspired by such concepts and theories?

(2) Space and Place
Communication networks and information technologies are always embedded in a material setting that can foster or hinder certain communication practices, call into being new forms of exchange, and drive technological development. What is the place of the geographical imagination in current communication history research? How valuable are the ideas of ‘place’ and ‘space’ in historical research? What are the current trends within the field of historical geography that can advance our understanding of communication history?

(3) News and Networks
How valuable is the idea of ‘the network’? What were the technologies that historically mediated the spread of information through networks? Who participated in networks used in advancing what Bourdieu later called cultural capital? To what extend did such networks contribute to the rise of public opinion and the public sphere? Can we talk about historical continuities between the early modern republic of letters and what Castells later popularized as the network society?

(4) Alternative Media
In order to understand communication history as a long-term, inclusive process, which alternative media or communication technologies (besides the familiar ‘mass media’ of the 20th century) need to be considered, and how? Possibilities might include migration flows, civic and religious ceremonies, theatre, preaching, fashion, the visual arts or architecture. What kinds of methodological or theoretical implications does their consideration carry?

(5) Sources and Methods
The progressive digitization of archives and libraries is opening access to primary sources for increasingly wider circles of scholars. What are the advantages and challenges raised by this development? To what extent do issues of materiality matter particularly to the realm of media and human communication research? What are the most relevant sources that you use for your own research?

(6) ‘New’ Media
At one time, even the oldest communication technologies were looked upon as suspicious novelties. Socrates famously condemned writing; the introduction of print may have been hailed by some as a ‘revolutionary’ enterprise – a term now often applied also to the digital age. What are the lessons that scholars can learn from studying critical periods during which one dominant technology is replaced by a new mode of communication? How do such lessons serve our understanding of the phenomenon called new media?

Organizing Committee:
Rosa Salzberg, PhD – University of Warwick, United Kingdom
Gabriele Balbi, PhD – Università della Svizzera italiana, Switzerland
Juraj Kittler, PhD – St. Lawrence University, USA

Re-Create: Histories of Media Art, Science & Technology 2015 (Montreal)

RE-CREATE 2015
The 10th anniversary and sixth international conference on the histories of Media Art, Science and Technology

Reminder DEADLINE extended January 12, 2015

Hexagram, Concordia University and Université du Québec à Montréal in collaboration with Media@McGill and CIRMMT- McGill Montréal, Canada.
5-8 November 2015
Re-Create CFP Submission

Re-Create 2015, the sixth international Conference on the Histories of Media Art, Science and Technology will mark the 10th Anniversary of the Re conference series. Re-Create 2015 is devoted to exploring what theories, methodologies and techniques can be used to understand past, present and indeed, future paradigms of creative material practice involving technologies within research contexts from a historical and critical point of view.

The title Re-Create is an abbreviation for the term “research-creation”, part of a growing international movement which goes by many names: “practice-led research,” “research-led practice,” and “artistic-research,” among others.

While the link between research and practice seems to be a new horizon, the media-based arts have long been at the intersection of the humanities, sciences, and engineering and present a critical site in which to take up the changing relationships between knowledge, power, and economy.

Research normally signifies modes of acquiring new knowledge that coherently and systematically advance a field and is grounded and validated by both social frameworks (peers) and existing bodies of knowledge. Similarly, research in conjunction with material practice demands that making be historically, theoretically and methodologically framed and valorized.

Re-Create 2015 seeks to interrogate the historical entanglement of research and making within a wide and diverse set of international sites, disciplines and contexts: from non-institutional creative research initiatives driven by artists and designers in the streets, to the labyrinths of industry funded research labs and universities. From unknown or ignored histories of research-based practices in Latin America, Asia and Indigenous communities to government funded initiatives, the conference will thus critically explore the ongoing and productive tensions between theory, method and making in the histories of media art, science and technology.

Potential contributors to the conference should focus thematic panel sessions or individual papers on one of the following areas of concentration:
:: LAB STUDIES: Studies on how artists and designers have historically worked in industry, universities and collective, grass roots-based research environments
:: CURATORIAL ACTIONS AND PRACTICES: How have research paradigms historically entered into curatorial practices and how have they been framed, exhibited and articulated?
:: ANTI-INSTITUTIONAL RESEARCH: Historical profiles of non-institutionally based research-driven explorations.
:: THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS: How have theoretical paradigms in media, art, science and technology historically evolved structuralism in the 1960s or media studies to current work in affect theory, media archaeology, critical post-humanist approaches derived from STS, appropriation and
remix aesthetics, feminist new materialism, queer and postcolonial studies, enactive and distributed cognition?
:: METHODOLOGIES: What can methodological tools emerging from the human and social sciences like ethnography, historiography, archaeology, genealogy and other qualitative techniques provide to the historical and critical positioning of practice?
:: INTERDISCIPLINARY INTERSECTIONS AND IMPACTS: Exploration of the formation and rise of interdisciplinary research fields (image science, sound studies, science studies, sensory studies, environmental studies) and their impact on the construction of media art histories.
:: DIGITAL HUMANITIES: What is the historical relationship between the digital humanities and the histories of media art, science and technology?
:: SITES: How historically have sites of research and practice in media art, science and technology evolved outside of the predominant spheres of Europe and North America and what forms have they taken?

CONFERENCE PROGRAM
The conference program will include competitively selected peer-reviewed individual papers, panel presentations and poster sessions as well as a number of keynotes and invited speakers and a parallel satellite program of events with Hexagram partners including core cultural institutions in Montreal. In the interest of maintaining a concentrated conference program, there will be a series of plenary sessions as well as accompanying poster sessions. Each of the plenaries as well as the poster sessions will mix together scholars and practitioners representing different cultural perspectives. The conference will be held in English and French, with live translation.

CALL FOR PROPOSALS
Re-Create 2015 welcomes contributions from researchers, artists, designers, scholars and technologists working across diverse disciplines, sites and practices. We particularly encourage scholars and creators from international contexts outside of Europe and North America.

ABOUT THE CONTEXT AND THE HOST
The conference will take place in Montreal hosted by Hexagram, the international network for media, art, design and digital culture. It is the largest network of its kind in Canada and one of the largest internationally dedicated to research-led creative practices. Ten years after the inaugural Re-Fresh conference at the Banff New Media Institute in 2005, the return of the conference to Canada and specifically to Quebec, offers a pertinent context to address the evolution of research in the histories of media, art, science and technology. The conference will be held across the two core Hexagram sites at Concordia University and the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). The venues are within walking distance from each other, centrally located in vibrant, downtown Montreal – the digital arts and culture capital of North America.

SUBMISSIONS
250 word abstracts of proposals, panel presentations and posters should be submitted in either Text, RTF, Word or PDF formats. Texts can be submitted in French and in English. The DEADLINE for submissions is January 12, 2015. INFORMATION about the submission process and general information can be found at: Re-Create Submission Site.

Conference partners include Media@McGill, CIRMMT-McGill, Cinémathèque québécoise, DHC-Art, Elektra/ACREQ, Goethe-Institut Montreal, Department fpr Image Science Danube University and others to be announced.

Conference chairs and Hexagram Co-Directors: Chris Salter, artist, Concordia University Research Chair and Associate Professor, Design and Computation Arts, Concordia University (QC/CA/US/DE) and Gisèle Trudel (QC/CA), artist and professor, École des arts visuels et médiatiques, Université du Québec à Montréal.

Re-Create Local Organizing Committee: Thierry BARDINI, Barbara CLAUSEN, Ricardo DAL FARRA, Jean DUBOIS, Jean GAGNON, Alice JIM, Jason LEWIS, Jonathan LESSARD, Louise POISSANT, Chris SALTER, Cheryl SIM, Jonathan STERNE, Alain THIBAULT, Gisele TRUDEL, Marcelo WANDERLEY

Re-Create 2015 International Advisory Board: Marie-Luise ANGERER, Monika BAKKE, Samuel BIANCHINI, Georgina BORN, Andreas BROECKMANN, Annick BUREAUD, Michael CENTURY, Joel CHADABE, Dooeun CHOI, Ian CLOTHIER, Sarah COOK, Nina CZEGLEDY, Sara DIAMOND, Diane DOMINGUES, Jean Paul FOURMENTRAUX, Zhang GA, Sébastien GENVO, Orit HALPERN, Jens HAUSER, Denisa KERA, Felipe César LONDONO, Natalie LOVELESS, Glenn LOWRY, Rafael LOZANO-HEMMER, Roger MALINA, Sally Jane NORMAN, Nicolas NOVA, Jussi PARIKKA, Christiane PAUL, Simon PENNY, Andrew PICKERING, Sundar SARRUKAI, Yukiko SHIKATA, Michel VAN DARTEL, Ionat ZURR

MAH Honorary Board: Douglas DAVIS, Jasia REICHARDT, Itsuo SAKANE, Peter WEIBEL

MAH Conference Series Board: Sean CUBITT, Oliver GRAU, Linda HENDERSON, Erkki HUHTAMO, Douglas KAHN, Martin KEMP, Machiko KUSAHARA, Tim LENOIR, Gunalan NADARAJAN, Paul THOMAS

CFP Communication as a Discipline & as a Field (Moscow)

Call for papers
Communication as a Discipline and as a Field: Sharing Experiences to Construct a Dialogue
July 9-11, 2015
Moscow, Russia
Sponsored by National Research University Higher School of Economics and National Communication Association

Defining and reflecting upon the development of communication as a discipline and as a field has been on the communication researchers’ agenda for about 50 years; however, there still is no clear agreement among communication scholars about the scope and development vector for this field of study and practice. There still are a lot of disagreements on the nature of communication discipline, including subject area, theoretical and methodological base, etc. Moreover, little is known about the specifics of development of communication discipline in the countries other than the leaders in the field. Multiple communication associations and international conventions have raised the issue of communication as a discipline, taking theoretical, regional, historical, institutional, and other perspectives. Finally, communication is a must-have part of many universities’ curricula and one of the most wanted skills and specializations in contemporary service and information job fields. The conference organized by the Department of Integrated Communications at Higher School of Economics in Moscow is aimed at bringing together once more different voices from communication scholarship in order to advance constructing a conceptual map of communication discipline and field in various parts of the globe and thereby further our understanding of the primary role of communication in modern society. We invite you to share your perspectives on the essential questions of the nature of communication as a discipline and as a field.

We welcome conceptual papers as well as comparative and empirical studies on the topic of the state and shape of communication discipline and field around the world. We also intend to welcome studies on the interdisciplinary aspects of communication and the changing disciplinary landscape with the growing power of new media. Possible presentation topics may include, but not limited to:
* Communication discipline: Regional and national perspectives
* Interdisciplinary nature of communication
* Approaches to studying and researching communication
* Communication discipline: the need for intercultural and cross-national dialogue
* National paradigms in communication research
* Communication as transmission of messages and co-production of meanings
* The role of new media in transformation of communication discipline
* Communication competencies in training modern professionals: a business-oriented approach
* Communication education: challenges, needs, and opportunities
* The map of communication journals: opportunities and constraints

Please submit your extended abstracts from November 2014 to March 2015 by sending an email to aendaltseva@hse.ru or by using a submission form provided on the conference website.

The participants will be informed on the decision in early April 2015. Full papers should be submitted by May 2015.

The registration process will be opened in May 2015 to allow us time to get visa assistance paperwork done.

To submit your paper or ask further questions about the conference or the Department of Integrated Communications please email Alexandra Endaltseva, International Academic Projects Coordinator, Lecturer at aendaltseva@hse.ru or fill out a form on the conference website http://commconferencehse.ru/?lang=en

CITP/MiLab (Vienna) Doctoral Workshop

CITP/MiLab Spring 2015 Doctoral Workshop

The Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP) at Princeton University and the Media Innovation Lab (MiLab) at the University of Vienna are pleased to announce our inaugural Doctoral Workshop to be held April 6th to April 8th, 2015 at Princeton University.

The workshop will be led by Ed Felten, the Robert E. Kahn Professor of Computer Science and Public Affairs and Director of CITP at Princeton University, and Homero Gil de Zúñiga, who holds the Medienwandel Professorship in the Department of Communication and leads the MiLab at the University of Vienna.

The goal of the workshop is to provide a forum for leading doctoral students to present their late-stage research to experts in the field, receive feedback and advice, and gain exposure to related work in other disciplines. We seek to provide a helpful, interactive experience for students, to highlight the work of rising stars in this area, and to foster interdisciplinary collaboration.

Participants will be selected through a competitive review process. We expect to invite about 8 doctoral students to attend. We will provide support for travel and lodging up to $500 per attendee. Students are encouraged to submit dissertation relevant work; abstracts and shorter proposals will not be accepted.

Research topics should focus on the interplay between information and communication technologies and the social, political, civic, and governmental spheres. We welcome applications from doctoral students doing relevant work in any discipline, including communication studies, computer science, economics, political science, and sociology. Possible topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
– Citizen journalism
– Civic engagement and digital technology
– E-voting security
– Internet governance
– Open government data
– Privacy technologies for democratic ends
– Social media and political expression
– State-sponsored internet freedom programs

Submission process: Please submit your manuscript, along with your CV and full contact information, to Laura Cummings-Abdo and Meike Müller no later than February 1, 2015.

CFP Protest Participation in Variable Communication Ecologies (Italy)

Protest Participation in Variable Communication Ecologies: Meanings, Modalities and Implications

Call for papers to the upcoming Information, Communication and Society Symposium (24-26 June 2014, Sardinia, Italy) titled ‘Protest Participation in Variable Communication Ecologies’. Deadline for abstracts: 30 January 2015.

For more information please visit the conference website or get in touch via social media (@protesteco; Facebook).

Contemporary collective action, social movements, civic and political protests are characterized by a growing complexity of actors, contents, repertories, contexts, and effects. Grappling with the implications of late modernity, scholars worldwide have reflected on the cross-fertilization of individual practices and collective mobilizations. They have foregrounded unconventional forms of engagement, through reflexive, expressive and embodied acts of dissent cutting across the cultural, political, and social domains, in persistent as well as increasingly transient modes of  organisation and belonging. Within this field,  some accounts graft social  media as an independent variable that would mitigate the democratic deficits of mass-mediated and institutionalised politics. Others would warn of the power imbalances and the inequalities in participation particularly social media reinforce or heighten.

Keynote speakers
Lance Bennett (University of Washington, USA)
Natalie Fenton (Goldsmith College, University of London, UK)
Zizi Papacharissi (University of Illinois at Chicago, USA)
Bev Skeggs (Goldsmith College, University of London, UK)

Seeking to kindle an imagination that situates social media in lived experience and practice, this conference intends to unpick the history and the present of linkages but also of any signs of a conscious uncoupling of network technologies, broadcasting media and physical places where protest participation is enacted. In doing so, we aim to tackle the significant challenges posed to democratic politics, social theory and research by resultant variable communication ecologies.

The organizers invite theoretical reflections and empirical analyses tracking continuities and changes in protest participation arising in the blurred lines between social media, broadcasting media and physical places. In particular, the conference welcomes contributions that address the following questions:

*What forms of civic/uncivic protest participation are (de)activated in contemporary communication ecologies?
*What are the effects of these different forms of participation on institutional politics, political culture, civic education, collective identities and the media?
*Which structural – both societal and technological – elements of contemporary communication ecologies enable, accentuate or discourage protest participation?
*Which type of content converges and is hybridized in the practices of protest participants, of protest-covering media or of the organizations that are targets of protest?
*Which forms of exclusion are being overcome or heightened in the communication ecologies where protest participation is instantiated?
*What are the conceptual challenges ahead of us? As we query communication ecologies, do concepts old and new, e.g. “mediatization”, “convergence”, “remediation”, “boundary publics”, “connective action” continue to be analytically informing for mapping the nature and meaning of participation in protest as well as in the civic life beyond it?
*Which methodological obstacles arise for research oriented towards analysing protest participation in variable communication ecologies? And how do we overcome them?

We invite 500 word abstracts that outline the envisaged potential to tackle such questions in innovative ways. Abstracts should be accompanied by a 100-word biography of the presenter(s) together with contact details. Abstracts/biographies/contact details should be sent to protest_ecologies@uniss.it.

Proposals will be reviewed on a rolling basis by the scientific committee. The final deadline for submission is 30th January 2015. Without compromising scientific standards, the Conference aims for a wide geographical representation of scientists. Notifications of acceptance will be sent out at the earliest opportunity and no later than March 2015.

Following the conference, participants will be invited to submit their papers for consideration by the journal iCS – Information, Communication & Society  which will dedicate a special issue to the conference proceedings. At that time, contributions will also be invited to an edited collection.