[Commlist] CFP: Energy In/Out of Place: A Virtual Energy Humanities Research-Creation Conference

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*Energy In/Out of Place: *

*A Virtual Energy Humanities Research-Creation Conference*

*May 19-22, 2020 *

University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada;

University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada; /and/

online around the world

Contact info: (energyandplace /at/ gmail.com) <mailto:(energyandplace /at/ gmail.com)>


_Workshop keywords_:

energy; place; low carbon research; methods; energy transition; 
research-creation


*CALL FOR PROPOSALS*

The accumulating crises and injustices of climate change are drastically 
reordering the composition and characteristics of places around the 
world. Yet, these interlinked harms and pressures vary highly by locale. 
Similarly, a global transition to more sustainable forms of energy is 
required, but energy transition is highly local and complex, involving 
new technologies, behaviors, values, and social forms that must be 
collectively imagined and emplaced. Transition will therefore proceed 
differently in different locations, but everywhere it will require deep 
changes in the way we do things, from business and culture, to academia 
and politics.

This *virtual research-creation workshop* calls on participants to 
explore the many roles of energy in shaping and mediating a diverse 
array of places around the world. It asks participants to reflect on 
sites in and around where they live and work that carry potential for 
deep changes in the energy regimes that dominate everyday life. What 
historical forms have been etched into the landscape, infrastructures, 
and imaginaries of the site? How does energy traverse geographic and 
social boundaries, making and unmaking places in the process? What flows 
of energy, conversely, might chart new relations to place? How do global 
energy systems localize themselves in different geographies, cultures, 
and quotidian experiences—and how might we, as researchers, seek to do 
the same?


*_FORMAT_*
*The Energy In/Out of Place workshop will bring together a small group 
of scholars and artists from around the world to share their research 
and collaborate in an online process of comparative research-creation 
and inquiry. *Distributed, site-specific engagements with different 
energy places will be shared through asynchronous virtual documentation 
and exchanges, in addition to livestreamed panel discussions and keynote 
lectures from *Natalie Loveless* <https://loveless.ca/about> and *Sheena 
Wilson* <http://sheenawilson.ca/> (University of Alberta) and *Kirby 
Calvert* 
<https://www.uoguelph.ca/geography/Faculty/calvert-kirby> (University of 
Guelph).

In April 2020, before the workshop begins, all participants will be 
given a research prompt that will direct them through an open ended 
process of documenting the engagements between place and energy that are 
evident at their site. Documentation may take the form of ethnographic 
or creative writing, photography, drawing, audio or video recordings, or 
other media. The resulting materials will be uploaded to a website, 
along with short critical assessments of the process, in advance of the 
workshop.

During the week of the workshop (May 19-22) participants will be able to 
participate in both live and asynchronous discussions and lectures, 
comparing the results and strategies of different participant teams. 
Afterwards, participants will have the opportunity to revise their 
documentation and write reflections on their findings for publication in 
an artist book based on the workshop proceedings.


*_SUBMISSIONS_*
We encourage proposals from individuals or groups that include the 
following:


1. A description of the place that the individual or group would like to 
consider, including its past, present, and/or future energy uses, 
relations, and flows (~500 words);


2. A short biographical statement from each member of the group that 
identifies the skills and methods they will bring to the process of 
research-creation (~250 words each);


3. If small grants were to be made available for individuals or groups, 
a rough budget outline of how these might be allocated in the research 
process (transportation, materials, equipment, etc.) (up to $500 CAD).

Participants may work alone, or in groups of roughly 1-4 collaborators.

The organizers hope to choose teams from a variety of career stages in 
and outside of academia with relations to a wide range of places: urban, 
suburban, rural, ex-urban; production or consumption; domestic or 
workplace; Global South or Global North.

*Proposal submissions are due on December 15, 2019 and can be sent to 
(energyandplace /at/ gmail.com) <mailto:(energyandplace /at/ gmail.com)> as an 
attached .doc or .pdf file.*


*_A NOTE ON THE WORKSHOP FORMAT_*
A large portion of academia’s carbon footprint comes from air travel to 
conferences, workshops, and other meetings. International conferences 
have grown in number and size over the past fifty years and have become 
increasingly important to academic advancement, although they produce 
significant amounts of waste and questions of travel funding and global 
mobility limit the kinds of people who can travel to these gatherings. 
E-conferencing offers a means to simultaneously address these climate 
and research equity concerns. As energy humanities scholars, we have a 
vested and situated interest in using and promoting these alternatives.

Additionally, we seek to explore the affordances of the virtual 
conference format in order to bring more than just scholars’ faces and 
words to the screen, but as a value-added proposition in which 
multi-sensory worlds, local contexts, and creative forms of 
representation can be analytically and rhetorically mobilized within our 
research. We see virtual conferences as an opportunity to deepen 
comparative engagements with the question of global energy transition, 
both in this workshop’s content and organizing principles.

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