[Commlist] CFP for Reimagining Our University IAMCR Preconference

Reimagining Our University Preconference at the 2019 IAMCR Conference in 
Madrid

*Date and time*: Sunday July 7, 2019, 9:00am-4:30pm

*Location: *Madrid, Spain

*(Extended) Proposal deadline: *May 10, 2019 (11:59pm MST)

_The Program:_

/Reimagining Our University /aims to cultivate solidarity and 
collaboration by bringing emerging scholars together to discuss our 
concerns with the contemporary university and brainstorm solutions to 
some of these questions. We are the future of the university, and we can 
either choose to accept the university as it stands, prioritizing our 
personal success within market-driven structures, or we can choose to 
develop transnational networks of emerging scholars committed to 
supporting one another as we develop and cultivate visions of what the 
university might become.

The preconference will be divided into two parts: (1) three 
conference-style roundtables in which individuals share ten-minute 
provocations, followed by open discussion; and (2) carefully designed 
workshops aimed at targeted brainstorming and goal-setting in response 
to previously identified key areas of concern.

_The Vision:_

At the upcoming 2019 IAMCR Conference, we will be gathering to engage 
the role of communication in fulfilling the Preamble of the Paris 
Declaration (UN, 1948), which states that /"recognition of the inherent 
dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the 
human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the 
world"/.__

This commitment must begin within our own institutions. However, 
contemporary universities are undergoing a process of the so-called 
“neoliberalization”, in which students are called “customers” or 
“users”, and faculty and graduate students are reduced to labor force or 
“service providers”. In this context, the contemporary University’s 
commitments to financial viability often undermine and prevail upon the 
collective attempts of faculty, staff, and students to cultivate a 
community of knowledge.

It can be tempting to call for a return towards the origins of the 
university, for a restoration of its initial commitment to the 
Humanities and the development of thoughtful citizens. However, even if 
the university was not always as commercially driven, the university has 
never been committed fully to the dignity and rights of /all /members of 
the human family. It has always been exclusionary in some form, and the 
university participated actively in the European colonial project.

Instead it is necessary to begin with a blank slate and imagine the 
modern university from the ground up, /as we need it to be/. What 
purpose should the university have in today’s society? For whom should 
the university be designed? How should coursework be structured? How 
should the tenure process function? Can we design financially stable 
institutions without structuring such institutions around financial 
viability and market interests? These are massive questions with which 
we must wrestle, and we must wrestle with them /together.

/

_Call for Proposals:_

Faculty and graduate students at all levels are encouraged to apply. 
Though this preconference is sponsored by the Emerging Scholars Network 
and emphasizes the collaboration and contributions of emerging scholars, 
we value the insights and perspectives of experienced academics who also 
wish to reimagine the university as it exists today.

For the first session, we request interested participants to submit an 
author bio and a 300-word abstract outlining their brief ten-minute 
provocations that offer insights, challenges, calls to action, or other 
reflections in response to the central question of this preconference: 
how must we rethink and reimagine the university today?

For the second session, we request interested workshop organizers to 
submit a CV and one-page proposal outlining their idea for a workshop 
related to the theme of this preconference.

Potential topics for provocations or workshops could include:

·Decolonizing the university

·Rethinking the publishing model

·Public scholarship and the university

·The future of finances within the Academy

·The tenure-track process

·University infrastructures

·The university’s responsibility to the environment

As this pre-conference will function as a workshop, involving the active 
participation of all conference attendees, all in attendance may request 
a letter to their home institution, in which we advocate for their merit 
to receive travel funding, regardless of whether they are one of the 
speakers presenting a provocation.

*Please send all proposals and queries to Rachel Lara van der Merwe 
(University of Colorado Boulder) at (rachel.vandermerwe /at/ colorado.edu) 
<mailto:(rachel.vandermerwe /at/ colorado.edu)> no later than May 10, 2019 
(midnight MST).*

_Organisers:
_The Emerging Scholars Network is the key organizer and sponsor of this 
event. ESN 
(http://iamcr.org/s-wg/section/emerging-scholars-network-section/home 
<https://iamcr.org/s-wg/section/emerging-scholars-network-section/home>) 
is a section dedicated to the work and careers of emerging scholars in 
the field of media studies and communication.

The ESN organizes emerging scholar panels and joint panels with other 
sections. Emerging Scholars panels provide a comfortable environment for 
the presentation of theses and works in progress, where emerging 
scholars can receive feedback from colleagues also at the beginning of 
their careers and from senior scholars who act as respondents to 
individual papers.


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