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[Commlist] CFP: digital ecologies 2022 conference
Tue Feb 15 20:16:14 GMT 2022
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DIGITAL ECOLOGIES IN PRACTICE
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When: 28-29 July 2022
Where: hybrid - online and in-person: University of Bonn, Germany
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CALL FOR PAPERS
Following the success of the inauguralDigital Ecologies 2021 conference
<http://www.digicologies.com/2021-workshop/sessions/>, we are announcing
a call for papers for the Digital Ecologies 2022 conference to be held
in Bonn, Germany on 28th and 29th July. The theme of the conference is:
Digital Ecologies in Practice. We encourage scholars and practitioners
to demonstrate, share, and reflect on the deployment of digital
technologies, the development of digital methods, and other creative and
critical digital engagements with the nonhuman world.
Researchers and practitioners across multiple disciplines are
increasingly experimenting with the affordances of digital technologies
for producing novel human-nonhuman relations, inaugurating new modes of
environmental governance, and being attentive to nonhuman perspectives.
Digitisation offers novel opportunities for generating knowledges
concerning the nonhuman world, enabling previously inaccessible
ecological encounters, and fostering communities with shared eco-centric
goals. However, digital technologies, and the data-driven approaches
they enable, are not without their problems. They give rise to new
avenues for exploitation and marginalisation, and can entrench relations
of power embedded in market-based and technocratic responses to
environmental issues.
The digital as pharmakon is neatly encapsulated in the recent
development ofVR for dairy cows
<https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-50571010>. While the developers
purportedly have the animals’ emotional wellbeing in mind, the
deployment of this technology does little to break the violent paradigm
of animal agriculture and exploitation. Indeed, while such technologies
explicitly recognise the sentience of these animals, manipulation of
this very sentience is used to reinforce the status of the
cow-as-commodity. In search of profit, cows are granted the view of
fields but not the sounds, smells, and sensations that come with grazing
outdoors. Such experiments raise important questions about who the
digital is for and what it can do. Meanwhile, cows are being integrated
into the bovine Matrix.
Geographers, and other scholars across the social sciences and
environmental humanities, have drawn much-needed critical attention to
the ways in which nonhuman life is digitised and to what ends (Blue,
2016
<https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/2373566X.2016.1166976>;Davies,
2000
<https://www.routledge.com/Animal-Spaces-Beastly-Places/Philo-Wilbert/p/book/9780415198479#:~:text=As%20a%20result%20of%20these,across%20cultures%2C%20and%20over%20time.>;Dwyer,
2021
<https://rgs-ibg.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/area.12728>;McLean,
2020
<https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-3-030-28307-0>;Nelson,
2017
<https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0016718516300501?via%3Dihub>;Nost
and Goldstein, 2021
<https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/25148486211043503?journalCode=enea>;Ritts
and Bakker, 2021
<https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0016718521001214?via%3Dihub>;Sandbrook
et al., 2015
<https://conbio.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/conl.12113>;Stinson,
2017
<https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016718516302172?via%3Dihub>;Turnbull
et al., 2020
<https://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/intellect/jem/2020/00000001/a00101s1/art00007;jsessionid=4rna82kakf841.x-ic-live-02>;Verma
et al., 2016
<https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016718515302669?via%3Dihub>;von
Essen et al., 2021
<https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/25148486211061704>).
However, we see further opportunity for work to explore how geographers
can develop digital ecologies in practice. Inspiration can be gleaned
from scholars like Clara Mancini who is designing digital technologies
for and with nonhumans to support multispecies objectives (Mancini, 2017
<https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1071581916300180?via%3Dihub>;North
and Mancini, 2016 <https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2946043>), and
Jennifer Gabrys (2019
<https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/how-to-do-things-with-sensors>)
whose Citizen Sense project designs air monitoring devices to
democratise environmental action.
With these aims in mind, we arrive at several questions. How can digital
methods be deployed - meaning methods appropriate for studying digital
human-nonhuman relations, and methods that themselves involve digital
devices and practices - within the field of digital ecologies? How do
digital technologies allow scholars, practitioners, and artists to
experiment with novel modes of representation and participation, and
creatively cross disciplinary and species boundaries? Which problems are
solved, created, or exacerbated by the use of digital technologies in
such research? We are particularly drawn to approaches that consider and
mobilise digital technologies that further environmental justice and
decolonising objectives (Vera et al., 2019
<https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1369118X.2019.1596293>;Vargas-Ramirez
and Paneque-Galves, 2019 <https://www.mdpi.com/2504-446X/3/4/76>), and
that support nonhumans in their flourishing.
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SUGGESTED THEMES
We invite paper contributions relating, but not limited, to the
following thematic areas:
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Innovative digital methods for sensing, representing, and studying
environments
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Projects experimenting with forms of environmental data justice,
citizen sensing, community-based and Indigenous approaches to
digital ecological practice
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Wildlife tracking, sentinels, surveillance, and other forms of
bio-monitoring
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(Nonhuman) user-oriented design
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Digital environmental governance
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Speculative design for more-than-human worlds
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Art-science and interdisciplinary collaborations involving digital
technologies
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Digital ecologies in virtual and augmented realities
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Projects involving nonhumans as participants/collaborators
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Social media and digital ecologies
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Methods for sonic and acoustic digital ecologies
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Multi-sensory digital methods including taste, touch, smell
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Speculative design for more-than-human worlds
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Creative approaches to digital ecologies in practice
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Papers generally relating to the theme of digital ecologies are very
welcome
Please submit your abstracts to (team /at/ digicologies.com). Abstracts should
be no more than 250 words in length. We welcome 15 minute paper
presentations or 5 minute lightning talks.In your proposal, please state
your name, title, current position, presentation format, and abstract.
In addition,please state whether you intend to attend in-person or
online only, whether you will be attending both days or day two
only, andwhether you would like to apply for funding to attend in
person (see below for details on this).
Deadline for abstract submissions: 15/04/2022
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CONFERENCE SCHEDULE
Digital Ecologies in Practice will bea two-day hybrid event, held both
in-person and online.
Day One (in-person only) will involve several practical outings and
exhibitions. Participants will get hands-on experience with a range of
digital technologies, including immersive VR nature experiences, a
demonstration of digital fences, and a ‘digital urban ecologies walk’.
We are delighted to host the interdisciplinary experience design
collective from the Netherlands,Polymorf <https://www.polymorf.nl/>, as
our keynote for day one. Polymorf will be exhibiting their
groundbreaking and award-winning collective and immersive VR experience
-Symbiosis <https://www.polymorf.nl/interaction/symbiosis/> - for
participants.
Day Two (in-person and online) will follow a more standard conference
format, consisting of several panels and a keynote event (tbc).
In-person participants will have the option of dining together at the
end of each day. We have a limited amount of funding available to cover
the travel costs of several participants. In your proposals,please
indicate whether you would like to apply for this funding. Participants
are encouraged to seek funding from their institutions, funding bodies,
and departments. Priority will be given to PhD candidates, early career
researchers, and non-tenured academics.
We encourage scholars and practitioners from a range of disciplines to
apply: social scientists; natural scientists; humanities scholars;
artists/designers; and beyond. Interdisciplinary collaborations are
highly encouraged.
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DIGITAL ECOLOGIES IN PRACTICE SPECIAL ISSUE WITHCGIP
Following the conference, we will submit a proposal for a special issue
ofcultural geographies in practice. Contributions will document and
reflect on creative, practical, and experimental uses of digital
technologies and mediation in relation to environmental governance and
knowledge production, human-nonhuman encounters, and digitised
more-than-human worlds more broadly. The editors ofCGiP have already
expressed their support for this endeavour.
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Digital Ecologies in Practice is co-organised by theDigital Ecologies
team <http://www.digicologies.com/about/team/> and Dr Julia Poerting,
with financial support from the University of Bonn, the German Research
Foundation (project number 446600467), and the ESRC.
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