[Commlist] Open Call for Workshop Contributions: How to know technology and migration otherwise: engaging with feminist and decolonial epistemologies

*Open Call for Contributions*

**

*How to know technology and migration otherwise: engaging with feminist 
and decolonial epistemologies*

**

Hybrid workshop organised by the COST action “DATAMIG 
<https://www.cost.eu/actions/CA22135/>”, Working Group 1 “Inventory”

**

*Date: *24–26 September 2025, lunch to lunch

*Place: *London, United Kingdom; The London School of Economics and 
Political Science, Department of Media and Communications

And online/hybrid

*Application deadline: *15 June 2025

**

*Organising team:*

Dr Philipp Seuferling and Prof Myria Georgiou, LSE 
((p.seuferling /at/ lse.ac.uk) <mailto:(p.seuferling /at/ lse.ac.uk)>)

Dr Michelle Pfeifer, TU Dresden ((michelle.pfeifer1 /at/ tu-dresden.de) 
<mailto:(michelle.pfeifer1 /at/ tu-dresden.de)>)

Dr Mirjam Twigt, Leiden ((m.a.twigt /at/ hum.leidenuniv.nl) 
<mailto:(m.a.twigt /at/ hum.leidenuniv.nl)>)

**

*Event description:*

The COST-action DATAMIG (Data Matters: Sociotechnical Challenges of 
European Migration and Border Control), Working Group 1 “Inventory”, is 
hosting a 2-day hybrid open workshop on the topic of epistemology in the 
critical study of technology and migration regimes. We ask: *What 
happens to knowledge-production around technology, datafication, and 
migration if we engage with feminist and decolonial deconstructions and 
rearticulations of epistemology?*

Much academic knowledge production continues to be driven by 
epistemologies thatdraw on underlying state- and Eurocentric frameworks. 
Considering that migration and the processes to study its dynamics are 
deeply entangled with colonialism and racial capitalism, in the study of 
technology and migration these Eurocentric frameworks become further 
entrenched and reproduced (Mayblin and Turner, 2020).

Technologies have long been central to movement and control. Practices of

quantification and data collection played a central role in the 
constitution of power,

governance at a distance, and the production of the ‘other’. These 
interact with other

patriarchal and other hierarchizing views and practices around 
institutionalized racism,policing and surveillance (Aas, 2006; 
Weitzberg, 2015). The rapid increase of

computational power, algorithmic innovations and commodification of data 
operateson colonial ruins.

In this workshop we seek to engage with the tools offered by feminist, 
decolonial, historical materialist and other critical scholarship for 
grappling with, what is often state-sanctioned, historical “colonial 
unknowing” (Vimalassery et al., 2016), for thinking about a world 
structured by technological border regimes and for political praxis to 
change it. In particular, feminist, Black, queer, decolonial, and 
historical materialist approaches that engage with coloniality allow us 
to recognize how unequal mobility and border violence relate to and are 
perhaps at once struggles against racialized capitalism, colonial 
dispossession and heteropatriarchal societies.

We seek to bring together critical thinkers in a two-day setting to 
explore, dissect and think-and-do-otherwise around epistemologies in 
technology and migration. The goal of the workshop is to go beyond case 
studies of singular border technologies, and rather gauge and advance 
common grounds around the question of epistemology - the theory and 
praxis of critical knowledge production around technological border 
regimes as such. Instead of a range of empirically grounded studies and 
traditional paper presentations, the goal of this part of the workshop 
is to congregate and abstract more fundamental questions around the 
production of knowledge, and what decolonial and feminist and historical 
materialist takes on epistemology mean for the range of case-based 
scholarship and interventions produced in the field. With the 
realization that decolonization is easily misused as a metaphor (Tuck 
and Yang, 2012), especially if and when it does not involve practical 
steps to establish change, after one day of flashlight presentations of 
individual research interests, the second day of the workshop will focus 
on collaborative outputs toward doing otherwise.

*Details on application:*

We invite short contributions from interested participants in response 
to the outlined themes of the workshop. In order to apply, please submit 
a *300 word reflection* on how your research and thinking speaks to 
feminist and decolonial epistemologies in the study of technology and 
migration regimes.

The tentative structure of the event incorporates a round of short, 
flashlight-style inputs from all participants on day 1, in order to 
identify common themes and interests and build smaller working groups. 
On the second day, the focus is on working together and developing 
potential outputs.

In order to gauge interest in different output formats (which e.g. can 
take more creative shapes such as a co-written manifesto, a zine, or a 
podcast series), please indicate in the application form what kinds of 
outputs you are interested in.

*Application form: *https://forms.office.com/e/57CuKCu049 
<https://forms.office.com/e/57CuKCu049>

*Travel and funding:*

The event is funded by the COST action DATAMIG. A limited number of 
participants can be reimbursed for travel and other expenses via the 
COST system.

*Timeline: *

Deadline for Submission of Abstracts: 15 June 2025

Notification of Acceptance: by early July

Estimated number of participants: 20

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