ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

ECREA regional ICSI section conference

October 14-16, 2019

Tilburg University, Department of Communication and Cognition, Tilburg, the Netherlands

Deadline: June 9, 2019, midnight (CET)

Website: http://www.icsi2019.nl/

Keynote presentations:

• Jeffrey Treem, associate professor of Organizational Communication & Technology, University of Texas at Austin
• Marjolijn Antheunis, professor of Communication & Technology, Tilburg University

Two-day conference and parallel sessions (Oct 14-15) for all participants. One-day (Oct 16) workshop for young scholars and senior respondents.

The ICSI Regional Conference is the 6th bi-annual meeting of the Interpersonal Communication and Social Interaction section of ECREA, the European Communication Research and Education Association. This year’s conference is hosted by Tilburg University, Department of Communication and Cognition, and will be held in Tilburg, the Netherlands.

The title of the conference refers to the two main themes we want to address in this conference.

First, in this conference we want to connect scholars from the different sub-disciplines of interpersonal communication and social interaction. Amongst us are scholars who study workplace interaction, communication in interpersonal relationship, impression management, and interpersonal health communication. Connecting our insights from different fields may inform our own research, provide creative ideas for future research, and help theory development. For example, patient-doctor interactions may mirror employer-employee communication and research on online dating may inform how employees become successful brand ambassadors.

Second, our title reflects the fact that our mediated and unmediated interactions are increasingly connected and integrated. We can no longer consider online communication as separate from offline communication. This raises question as to how to combine different online and offline communication channels in our daily interactions. For example, how do we strategically employ different communication technologies to attain our work and private goals? Can we establish an interpersonal relationship with a device like Amazon’s Echo and can Google Pixel indeed take care of our mobile conversations? How do online support communities help us in our daily lives? As advanced communication technologies increasingly become part of our everyday experience, we are forced to revisit and connect theories of online and offline social interaction.

The ICSI Regional Conference 2019 provides an opportunity to share our ideas, theories and research about interpersonal communication and social interaction across our different specializations. We call for paper and panel proposals from any communication or communication-related discipline and methodology that address the conference themes, including, but not limited to, papers that intersect and/or interconnect with the following topics:

• (Mediated) workplace meetings
• Social interaction and social media in the workplace
• Virtual teams
• Interpersonal health communication
• Modality switching in interpersonal communication
• The role of emotions in interpersonal communication
• Social interaction with conversational human agents, personal assistants & chatbots
• Employee ambassadorship & professional identity
• Impression management & formation in online dating
• Social interaction in interpersonal relationships
• Professional and personal boundary management
• Communication competence and skills in workplace & health settings
• Connecting customers & organizations
• Interpersonal communication and social support
• Privacy and ethical issues in studying interpersonal communication in different fields

Abstract Submission

We welcome abstract submissions as well as clearly framed, thematic panel proposals. If you want to submit a panel proposal, please send an abstract of the overall panel theme as well as a short description of each panelist and their presentation (3-5 participants). We also welcome other ideas for special sessions or workshops.

Please submit an abstract of maximum 300 words for individual/co-authored papers or a panel proposal of maximum 600 to the submission system. The submission deadline is June 9, 2019, midnight (Central European Time).

Please submit your proposals via the following link: http://www.icsi2019.nl/

We will get back to you with information on acceptance of papers and panels and with a preliminary program and practical information at the end of June.

Young Scholars Workshop

We kindly invite Ph.D. students and junior faculty to participate in the young scholars workshop held on the third day of the conference, on Wednesday, October 16th, 2019 at Tilburg University. During the workshop, participants and senior faculty members will discuss the papers submitted by the participants and talk about methodological and theoretical issues in communication research. The workshop provides also an opportunity to discuss research career issues and career development with senior scholars. The workshop is included in the main conference fee.

You can sign up to the workshop and submit a summary of your paper via the submission system. The summaries should not exceed 300 words. The deadline is June 9, 2019, midnight (Central European Time).

Please submit your proposals via the following link: http://www.icsi2019.nl/

Please note, that all accepted participants are expected to submit a 1,000 to 1,500-word paper of their work before the event in September and to give a short presentation of their work during the workshop. We invite all Ph.D. students and junior faculty with relevant projects to participate and get feedback on their research from senior scholars in the field, as well as to network with international peers.

Contact information

Conference organizers: Alexander Schouten, Anu Sivunen, and Karyn Stapleton

Conference website: http://www.icsi2019.nl/

Organizer email: ecrea.icsi@gmail.com

Edited by: Tanja Thomas, Merle, Marie Kruse and Miriam Stehling

In contemporary media cultures, media are part of the most important sites where collective representations and narrations of a post‐migrant civic culture are (re‐)negotiated. At the same time, they offer powerful resources and instruments for civic participation and collaboration. Media and Participation in Post‐Migrant Societies addresses an important shortcoming in the research on participation in media cultures by introducing a special focus on post-migrant conditions to the discussion – both as conceptual refinements and as empirical studies.

The contributions of this book provide diverse analyses of the conditions, possibilities, but also constraints for participation and the role of media communication in the reshaping of civic culture in post‐migrant societies.

Read more and buy here.

December 16-17, 2019

University of Leeds

Deadline: June 28, 2019

Political Studies Association ‘Media and Politics Group’ Annual Conference

School of Media and Communication

Keynote address by Professor Michael Saward (Warwick)

Roundtable session on ‘What makes a good political performance?’

including Prof Candida Yates (Bournemouth), Dr Lone Sorensen (Huddersfield), Prof John Corner (Leeds) and Prof Stephen Coleman (Leeds)

We are delighted to be celebrating the 20-year anniversary of the PSA Media & Politics group at the University of Leeds in December 2019. Our conference theme this year responds to the growing body of research emphasizing the performative dimensions of political communication. The deadline for abstract submission is Friday 28 June 2019 (see full details below).

The changing nature of political communication raises questions about how the relationships between the actors in the classical ‘political communication triangle’ are dynamically articulated and constructed in the media. Concerns include the intensified professionalization of politicians’ communication; increased pressures to retain and engage audiences; populist challenges to the rules of the game; the observed tendency of news to represent politics as a strategic game; and the disconnection between citizens and politicians.

Politics is performed in a variety of media forms and genres, including political drama, cartoons and comedy. The theme of the conference on ‘political performance’ allows a broad call for papers which explore the contribution of the media, political actors, and citizens to mediated performances of politics, and encourages a focus on the potential consequences of these performances.

While the main theme of this conference is politics and performance, the Media & Politics Group operates an open and inclusive policy, and papers dealing with any aspect of media and politics are welcomed. This may include areas of political communication and journalism, but also includes a broader view of the political within such areas as online media, television, cinema and media arts, both factual and fictional. In addition to academic research, the conference will also welcome practice-based work in art, film and performance related to the area of media and politics.

Deadlines and submission process:

Friday, 28 June 2019: Deadline for abstract submission. Please send abstract proposals for 15 minute papers to leedspsampg@leeds.ac.uk. These should include the following: title and name, institutional affiliation and address, and email address, together with a paper title and abstract of not more than 250 words. Proposers should also indicate whether they are current postgraduate students.

Early August. Paper proposers notified of decision by conference committee. Conference registration opens. Details of online registration to follow: £120 conference registration fee for both PSA members and non-members; £60 for students/ precariously employed.

Friday, 4 October: Deadline for presenters to register.

Friday, 25 October: Draft programme released.

Monday, 16 December: Conference starts in Leeds.

About the PSA, conference prizes and financial support

The Political Studies Association is the UK’s leading association in the study and research of politics. The Media & Politics Group is one of the Political Studies Association’s larger specialist groups.

The MPG is a welcoming and inclusive group. The conference welcomes contributions from both members and non-members of the Political Studies Association and of the Media & Politics Group.

James Thomas Memorial Prize and postgraduate travel subsidies

Full papers of a maximum of 2000 words submitted by postgraduate students will be entered into the James Thomas Memorial Prize. This annual award is presented to the most outstanding paper by a postgraduate student at the Media & Politics Group Annual Conference.

The Media & Politics Group offers a limited number of travel subsidies (up to the value of £100) to support postgraduate student participation in this event. Postgraduate students interested in applying for these subsidies should please note this in their submission.

Conference organisers: Professor Stephen Coleman, Dr Julie Firmstone, Dr Giles Moss and Dr Katy Parry, School of Media and Communication, University of Leeds.

Contact: leedspsampg@leeds.ac.uk or mediaresearchsupport@leeds.ac.uk with any queries.

CMRC Conference in Collaboration with SIMAGINE:

January 8-11, 2020

The Center for Media, Religion, and Culture University of Colorado Boulder

Deadline: June 10, 2019

Confirmed Featured Speakers: Ann Laura Stoler, Catherine Walsh, & Glenn Coulthard

The question of borders and the practice of bordering persist in a world destined for encounters and confrontations. This persistence today bears resemblance to long-standing legacies of coloniality, modernity, and globalization, but it also foregrounds new narratives, aesthetics, and politics of exclusion and dehumanization. Talk of walls, fortresses, boundaries, and deportation has never been a political or philosophical anomaly, but rather a reflection of a particularistic social imaginary, a linear compulsion of epistemic assumptions that sees the world through the logic of hierarchy, classification, difference, and ontological supremacy. This foreclosure is a widely shared and accepted social imaginary, as demonstrated in current scholarship in the critical humanities and social and political sciences: a foreclosure that has also defined institutions and disciplines of knowledge production which continue to marginalize other knowledge systems and intellectual traditions and refuse to acknowledge their viability and legitimacy in the academy. Disciplinary walls and intellectually demarcated canons within the Western and Westernized university in the Global North and South have generally produced narrow curricula and models of learning that reproduce selective systems of thought, discourses and practices.

The tenacity of this normalized worldview requires urgent new imaginaries: a decolonial perspective not only to call out the ontological instability of Western theory, but also to establish a sense of epistemic hospitality capable of liberating and re-centering other ways of knowing and dwelling in the world. This contestation of physical and cognitive borders has found its most ardent proponents in recent movements such as #RhodesMustFall, Standing Rock, Idle No More, Undocumented and Unafraid, #Whyismycurriculumsowhite, Arab Uprisings, Black Lives Matter, and #MeToo, among others. At the heart of this decolonial injunction is a desire by absented voices to reclaim the right to self-narrate, to signify, and to render visible local histories, other temporalities, subjectivities, cosmologies, and struggles silenced by Western and Westernized accounts of the world.

The fields of art, religion and the media have not yet come under historical scrutiny about their own epistemic and existential imaginaries and whether they reify or disrupt dominant structures and legacies of knowledge production? Drawing from a variety of intellectual traditions and

established academic disciplines, these fields risk carrying the same blind spots, the same foreclosures, the same ontological foundations, and the same centered claims to universality.

What can a decolonial critique then do to avoid a zero-sum epistemology? And how can we develop new decolonial imaginaries as an invitation to undo the Eurocentrism of our paradigms, challenge the verticality of our pedagogical designs, and achieve an ethics of interpretation, an epistemic justice whereby theories from the South or from ‘the margins’ in the North are not treated merely as local or subjective? The decolonial attitude challenges us to avoid embracing singular universalities, and rethink altogether the hierarchies of global-local and of universal-particular that underlie this world’s inequality.

This will be the ninth in a series of successful international conferences held by the Center for Media, Religion, and Culture in Boulder. The previous meetings have brought together an interdisciplinary community of scholars for focused conversations on emerging issues in media and religion. Each has proven to be an important landmark in the development of theory and method in its respective area and has resulted in important collaborations, publications, and resources for further research and dialogue.

The 2020 conference is organized in conjunction with SIMAGINE, an international and interdisciplinary research consortium bringing together partners from the USA, the UK, Europe and South Africa; it is hosted by the University of Humanistic Studies in Utrecht, the Netherlands, and dedicated to the study of social imaginaries between secularity and religion in a globalizing world. SIMAGINE has organized conferences on ‘Religion, Community, Borders’ leading to a special issue of the open access Journal for Religion and Transformation in December 2019. In 2018 the consortium published the volume Social Imaginaries in a Globalizing World.

The conference will feature keynote lectures and keynote conversations, as well as thematic panels and artistic performances. We invite papers and panels from across disciplines, intellectual traditions, and geographic locations that engage with these questions and beyond. Possible topics could include but are not limited to:

• Borders, Bordering, Border Zones between the Imaginary and the Real
• Modernity, Secularity, Religious Legacies and Universality
• Social Imaginaries and (the Critique of) Anthropocentrism
• Coloniality and Decolonial Epistemologies
• What Counts as Critical Theory and Decolonial Critique?
• What Counts as Religion in the Decolonial Imaginary?
• Big Data, Algorithmic Culture, and (De)Coloniality
• Decolonial Intersectionalities
• Decolonial Feminisms
• Decolonizing Race, Ethnicity, and Identity
• Decolonial Pedagogy, Methodology, and Praxis.
• Media, Religion, and Theoretical Provincialism
• Media, Arts, and Decolonial Theory
• Media, Religion, the Other, and the Subaltern
• Religion, Theology, and Social Imaginaries
• Social Imaginaries and (the Critique) of Neoliberalist Globalization
• Geopolitics of Knowledge Production
• Language, Publishing, and Boundaries of Learning
• Imagination and Worldview Education: Interreligious Dialogue
• Queering the Archives

Abstracts of 300-350 words should be submitted to cmrc@colorado.edu by June 10, 2019.

Please include your email address and university affiliation in your submission.

For questions, email Nabil Echchaibi, Associate Director: nabil.echchaibi@colorado.edu or Stewart M. Hoover, Director: hoover@colorado.edu.

For more information, visit http://cmrc.colorado.edu.

November 6-8, 2019

Oslo, Norway

Deadline: August 15, 2019

The conference will take place in Oslo on November 6, 7 and 8th 2019 in connection with UNESCO’s International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists  at OsloMet University and The Freedom of Speech Foundation (Fritt Ord) , Norway.                          

The conference is organized jointly with the The Fritt Ord Foundation and with support from The National Commission for UNESCO and the research group Digital Journalism.

Safety for journalists, including digital safety, is a matter of public concern that is wide-ranging. It is vital for those who practice journalism, for their families and for their sources. It  is  essential  for  the  wellbeing  of  media  institutions,  civil  society,  academia  and  the  private sector more broadly. If we value the free flow of information for citizens, their governments and their international organisations, then the safety of journalists is central (Getachew Engida, Deputy Director-General of UNESCO).

Electronic  communications  of  news  media,  critical  bloggers,  and  other  individuals  or  organizations  disseminating  information  have  become  targets.  The danger emanates from various sources ranging from State-based actors to third parties. There is digital surveillance  that  goes  beyond  international  standards  on  privacy  and  freedom  of  expression. There is hacking of data and disruptive attacks on websites and computer systems. More extremely, some media actors are being killed for their online journalism. From 2011-2013, 37 of the 276 killings of journalists condemned by the UNESCO Director General were killings of journalists whose primary platforms were Internet-based. Many, if not most, of the other journalists who were killed also used digital tools in their daily work, which may have exposed them in various ways. (Jennifer R. Henrichsen et.al. Building digital safety for journalism: a survey of selected issues. 2015). 

Journalists need to know more about the dangers of digital attacks such as hacking and surveillance, and should take steps to protect themselves, their sources, and their work. Journalism researchers and educators need to know more about how the dangers to digital safety work in relation to journalists’ security and freedom of expression in general.

The 2019 annual conference on the Safety of Journalists will focus on digital safety but also invite papers discussing other aspects related to the safety of journalists. We invite paper presentations discussing topics such as (but not limited to) :

• Surveillance and mass surveillance
• Software and hardware exploits without the knowledge of the target
• Phishing, fake domain, Denial of Service and Man-in-the-Middle attacks
• Intimidation, harassment and forced exposure of online networks
• Disinformation and smear campaigns
• Confiscation of journalistic work product
• Data storage and mining
• Education and training
• Legal issues and policy making
• Culture and gender issues
• Working conditions and media production
• Source protection and the digital era
• Hate speech, defamation and libel
• Impunity
• Journalist roles and fixers
• NGOs and the safety of journalists

The conference will be organised as a mixture of key note speakers, working groups, panels and paper presentations.

Paper presentations:

If you want to participate with a paper, an abstract of maximum 500 words and a short bio focusing on possible earlier experience with research/practice in the field of safety of journalists/digital safety should be sent to safetyofjournalists@oslomet.no  before August 15, 2019. Please include your full name, institutional affiliation, and email. There is no registration fee and the participants are expected to cover their own costs for travel and accommodation.

A limited number of scholarships to cover flight and/or accommodation is available for Ph.D. students and researchers from low-income countries. Applications for scholarships should be submitted with the abstract together with a short CV.

The best papers will be considered for a forthcoming peer reviewed publication.

July 1-2, 2019

University of the State of Rio de Janeiro, Campus Francisco Negrão de Lima (Maracanã)

Abstract submission deadline: May 26, 2019

Please send your extended abstracts of max 4 – 6 pages to cphd2019@gmail.com. Your abstract can be in English, Portuguese or Spanish.

The international seminar "Participatory Communication and the Struggle Over Human Rights" aims to bring together researchers, activists, and institutions to discuss how the right to participatory communication can extend and deepen the recognition of human rights.

Struggle Over Human Rights

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was ratified by the member countries of the United Nations (UN) on December 10, 1948, including Brazil. The document inspired legislation and international treaties in defense of the fundamental rights and freedom, including the right to freedom of speech. The Declaration, art. 19, highlight that “Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers”.

After 70 years, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the concept of human rights and its implementation is (still) challenged. This raises questions about the nature of the challenges of human rights, and, particularly, of the right to communication.? After all, communication, especially (but not only) digital, is a key in the democratic process. What are these challenges, in general, and in relation to communication-related rights? How are the human rights struggled over? What is the role of citizen participation in these struggles themselves (e.g., through activism) and how is citizen participation the object of these struggle? How are the struggles over the right to communicate connected with (the affirmation of other) fundamental human rights, such as those in relation to education, health, and housing?

Participatory Communication

Brazil is particularly relevant to these debates. In 2018, Brazil also has completed 30 years of the Federal Constitution (CF), most known as Citizen Constitution. It was approved after decades of military dictatorship in the country. Nowadays, the CF was changed more than 100 times, which removed political and social rights that had previously been approved. The recent political changes in Brazil only threaten to further increase the levels of violence, and racism … However, the Law of access to information was approved in 2011, ensuring that any citizen can request public information directly to public institutions. Do these (relatively) new legal provisions contribute to broadening the right to communicate and make it more inclusive and participatory?

But we do not want to focus exclusively on Brazil. Latin America, as a whole, faces a critical situation, with, for instance, the murder of social leaders in many of the Latin American countries. In Brazil, the council Marielle Franco, a defender of human rights, was killed in 2018 and political violence is increasing, especially in rural areas. In Colombia, the peace agreements between the government and the guerrilla groups are ruptured and the conflicts are growing all around the country. Venezuela faces a conflict about the legitimacy of its leadership, putting the entire continent on alert. Central America suffers critical situations due to the high levels of violence and the migratory crisis, involving citizens of El Salvador, Guatemala and Nicaragua – who attempt to escape these high levels of violence in their countries of origin – and the governments of the United States and Mexico.

Thus, in this seminar, we welcome proposals, that explore the following issues (among other issues):

• Advances and challenges to the right to communicate and its participatory dimensions;
• Participatory (communication) practices and interventions which extend and deepen the recognition of other human rights, as the right to education, health, and housing, etc.;
• Projects, practices, narratives that link communication, education, health, and human rights.

Thus, we especially welcome proposals in the following topics:

1) Communication and Education:

This strand addresses research that are inserted in the interface of communication and education, in a broad way, also beyond the media and formal and school education. It investigates practices, processes, narratives and communicative-educational products in their socio-historical, political, economic context, also considering subjective, artistic, ... nuances, and the relations between race, class, and gender within these practices.

2) Communication and Human Rights:

This strand highlights the relation between communication – in its media, products, and processes – and human rights in a variety of aspects. It investigates communication as a human right, articulating historic, political / economy, socio-cultural aspects at different levels (local, regional, national, continental and global).

3) Dialogic/Participatory Communication and media activism:

This strand articulates all forms of communication aimed at promoting democracy and social development. It is also concerned with participatory forms of research in the universe of dialogic communication. It discusses the trajectory of the main concepts that surround the field.

We expect to have the participation of about 50 scholars and activists, mainly from Brazil and Latin America, but the call for participation will be not limited to them.

The seminar will feature oral presentations, a Ph.D. workshop and a conversation wheel with participatory communication activists, in a two-day event. The participants will be invited to submit the papers presented during the pre-conference to the Dialogic Communication Journal (UERJ).

The event is co-organized by the Participatory Communication Research Section (PCR) of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR).

Master and Ph.D. students are invited to present extended abstracts (4-6 pages) about their research and receive feedback from established researchers. The idea is provided resources to improve their research process, as well to strengthen the field of participatory communication.

Timing:

• Abstract submission deadline: 26 May 2019
• Notification on submitted abstracts: 3 June 2019
• Article submission deadline to Dialogic Communication Journal (UERJ): 01 August 2019

Submission of an abstract for the seminar:

After filling out the registration form, and sending the payment as instructed, please send your extended abstracts of 4 – 6 pages (max) to cphd2019@gmail.com. You can present your abstract in English, Portuguese and Spanish.

Location:

University of the State of Rio de Janeiro, Campus Francisco Negrão de Lima (Maracanã), Rua São Francisco Xavier, 524, Maracanã, Rio de Janeiro – RJ – Cep 20550-900.

Dates: 1-2 July 2019

Duration: 9h – 18h

Participation and registration: The event is open and to everyone. However, to present a paper and receive a certificate, you will need to be registered, using this form: https://forms.gle/DVkNyLNMTpR7UNB47, and you should have paid the registration fee.

Registration fee:

Professors/professionals: 12 USD

Students: 7 USD

Payment registration fee:

• Paypal: anabetune2@gmail.com;
• TranferWise: transferwise.com/u/anan51;
• or during the seminar

Organisers:

• Adilson Vaz Cabral Filho (EMERGE / PPGMC / UFF)
• Ana Lúcia Nunes de Sousa (NUTES / UFRJ)
• Luana Inocêncio (UFF)
• Nico Carpentier (PCR-IAMCR and Charles University)
• Marcelo Ernandez (LCD / UERJ)

University of Leicester

Deadline: June 10, 2019

Vacancy ID:593

Location:Leicester

Department:School of Media, Communication & Sociology

Vacancy terms:Full time, permanent

Salary details:Competitive

Hours per week:37.5

About the role

The School of Media, Communication and Sociology (MCS) formed three years ago from the merger of the Department of Media and Communication and the Department of Sociology. Both departments have illustrious histories, both have been central to the development of their respective disciplines. MCS has built on these outstanding intellectual legacies, and is now at an exciting phase of its development and expansion. As part of this, we are looking for two Professors who will provide academic leadership across (the disciplines that comprise) the School, and who will make a major contribution to our future as we continue to address, in our research and in our teaching, the most exciting and challenging sociological, cultural and communication issues of our time. As such we have specifically shaped the two posts as Professors of Media, Communication and Sociology. We are looking for individuals whose research, leadership and teaching can carry forward the intellectual agenda of the School as a whole, and whose expertise maps on to one or more of our research clusters or cognate areas of research.

About you

You will have an outstanding record of undertaking research to a world-leading standard, a strong track record of grant capture, and evidence of delivering excellence in teaching, ideally with external accreditation for this (e.g. Senior Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy). With an excellent academic reputation and evidence of dynamic performance in leadership roles, you will have achieved notable recognition in your discipline. You will have a well-developed network across the HE sector both nationally and internationally, with well-established links to external bodies and organisations. You will be expected to take on a key academic leadership role within the School, and will be committed to ensuring its continued success in the future.

Additional information

For informal enquiries, please contact Professor Jason Hughes on jason.hughes@le.ac.uk

We anticipate that interviews will take place during week commencing 24 June 2019

Leicester is a leading University committed to international excellence, world-changing research and high quality, inspirational teaching. We are strongly committed to inclusivity, promoting equality and celebrating diversity among our staff and students. Our strength is built on the talent of our scholars, drawn to us by a mutual passion for discovery. We seek to embed an adventurous and entrepreneurial spirit into our research culture, and to create an environment in which both disciplinary excellence and interdisciplinarity thrive.

In return for your hard work, we offer a working environment that is committed to inclusivity, through promoting equality and valuing diversity. We offer a competitive salary package with excellent pension schemes and a generous annual leave allowance. Located close to Leicester city centre, our award winning campus benefits from a wide range of cafes, a fully equipped sports centre and nursery facilities.

Apply here

University of Leicester

Deadline: June 10, 2019

Vacancy ID: 599

Location: Leicester

Department: School of Media, Communication & Sociology

Vacancy terms: Full time, permanent

Salary details: £39,609 to £48,677 per annum

Hours per week: 37.5

About the role

You will undertake research of the highest standard and contribute to high quality teaching and administration. You will be expected to make a strong contribution to the School’s reputation, building on the existing research undertaken within the School. Expertise that spans the range of disciplines represented by the School of Media, Communication and Sociology would be an advantage, but is not essential. You will be expected to contribute to raising levels of research activity, research income, teaching excellence and the overall visibility of the School. You will pursue and publish research of high quality in line with the School’s aim of producing world-leading research with meaningful impact.

About you

With experience in the delivery of teaching to both undergraduates and postgraduates, you will have a real passion for the subject matter. You will be motivated to provide the very best experience for our students using your expertise and skill to ensure all reach their potential. We are looking for someone who can network and collaborate at an international level, as well as evidence of high quality research publications.

Additional information

For informal enquiries, please contact Professor Jason Hughes on jason.hughes@le.ac.uk

We anticipate that interviews will take place during week commencing 24 June 2019

Leicester is a leading University committed to international excellence, world-changing research and high quality, inspirational teaching. We are strongly committed to inclusivity, promoting equality and celebrating diversity among our staff and students. Our strength is built on the talent of our scholars, drawn to us by a mutual passion for discovery. We seek to embed an adventurous and entrepreneurial spirit into our research culture, and to create an environment in which both disciplinary excellence and interdisciplinarity thrive.

In return for your hard work, we offer a working environment that is committed to inclusivity, through promoting equality and valuing diversity. We offer a competitive salary package with excellent pension scheme, a generous annual leave allowance and an online portal that offers a range of lifestyle benefits and discounts. Located close to Leicester city centre, our award winning campus benefits from a wide range of cafes, a fully equipped sports centre and nursery facilities. Further information regarding our extensive range of staff benefits is available here.

Apply here.

Edited by: Cynthia Carter, Linda Steiner, Stuart Allan

Journalism, Gender and Power revisits the key themes explored in the 1998 edited collection News, Gender and Power. It takes stock of progress made to date, and also breaks ground in advancing critical understandings of how and why gender matters for journalism and current democratic cultures.

This new volume develops research insights into issues such as the influence of media ownership and control on sexism, women’s employment, and "macho" news cultures, the gendering of objectivity and impartiality, tensions around the professional identities of journalists, news coverage of violence against women, the sexualization of women in the news, the everyday experience of normative hierarchies and biases in newswork, and the gendering of news audience expectations, amongst other issues.

These issues prompt vital questions for feminist and gender-centred explorations concerned with reimagining journalism in the public interest. Contributors to this volume challenge familiar perspectives, and in so doing, extend current parameters of dialogue and debate in fresh directions relevant to the increasingly digitalized, interactive intersections of journalism with gender and power around the globe.

Journalism, Gender and Power will inspire readers to rethink conventional assumptions around gender in news reporting—conceptual, professional, and strategic—with an eye to forging alternative, progressive ways forward.

20% Discount Available - enter the code FLR40 at checkout*

Hb: 978-1-138-89532-4 | £96.00 Pb: 978-1-138-89536-2 | £27.99

* Offer cannot be used in conjunction with any other offer or discount and only applies to books purchased directly via our website. See: http://www.routledge.com/9781138895362

For more details, or to request a copy for review, please contact: Jennifer Vennall, editorial assistant, jennifer.vennall@tandf.co.uk

December 16-17, 2019

Goldsmiths, University of London

Abstract deadline: July 1, 2019

Submit here.

Keynotes:

• Professor Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Simon Fraser University
• Professor John Frow, The University of Sydney
• Professor Susanne Kuechler, University College London
• Professor AbdouMaliq Simone, The University of Sheffield

We’re drowning in an ocean of data, or so the saying goes. Data’s “big”: there’s not only lots of it, but its volume has allowed for the development of new, large-scale processing techniques. Our relationship with governments, medical organisations, technology companies, the education sector, and so on are increasingly informed by the data we overtly or inadvertently provide when we use particular services. The proverbial data deluge is large-scale—but it’s also personal.

Data increasingly characterises what it means to be a person in the present. Data promises to personalise services to better meet our individual needs. Data is often construed as a threat to our person(s). Not every person predicated by data is predicted the same. The intersection between data and person isn’t fixed: it has to be figured.

The aim of this conference is to bring together an interdisciplinary group of researchers to explore how the person—or persons, plural—are figured in/out of data. The figuration of a person might encompass any or all of processes of representation, calculation, analogisation, prediction, and conceptualisation. It cuts across multiple scales, epistemological modes, and disciplinary areas of enquiry. It tackles problems that cross into disparate disciplines. Our proposition is that the conceptual language of ‘the figure’ and its variations—figuration, figuring, to figure, and so on—can help us to apprehend what the person is and how it is processed in the present.

We invite proposals for 20-minute presentations that take up or respond to the question of how the person is figured in/out of data. We are interested in presentations that address the conceptual, methodological, analytical and/or empirical challenge of figuring the person in the present. Conversely, we are also interested in papers that take up the concept of the figure—broadly construed—as an heuristic for producing knowledge about the constitution of person(s) in the present.

Our proposition is deliberately interdisciplinary. We encourage proposals from researchers working in disciplines for whom the figure is central. These might include, but are not limited to: the social sciences, art history, media studies, the medical humanities, literary studies, philosophy, science and technology studies, urban studies, or geography.

The themes that papers might address could include:

• The figuration of person or persons in/out of data;
• Techniques of personalisation and the figuration of the person or persons;
• Approaches that address the interrelation of visual, numerical, statistical, metaphorical, and/or philosophical modes of figuring the person or persons in the present;
• Conceptual languages for apprehending persons in relation to data—e.g. the subject, identity, user, data double, individual, dividual, etc.;
• The relationship between collective categories and/or category production—like persons, population, distributed reproduction, homophily, etc.—and techniques of figuration;
• Figure as a concept for thinking gender in, e.g., science and technology studies;
• The art-historical/psychological/media-theoretical concept of “figure/ground” and persons/data;
• The relationship between visual and numerical modes of figuring and the constitution of persons;
• Literary/linguistic uses of figuration in e.g. metaphor, analogy, simile, the icon, etc. in relation to the person or persons and data;
• Figuration as a means of thinking the relationship between image/text/number or media and code;
• Related concepts—like the diagram or pattern—as complements to or substitutes for the figure;
• Conceptualising figuration in relation to resemblance, similarity, seriality, difference, etc.

Please submit abstracts of 300 words, including your institutional affiliation(s) and a short biography (a line or two is fine) by following this link and filling out the online form: https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/cim/events/figurations/figurations/.

The deadline for abstract submissions is July 1st, 2019.

If you have any enquiries, please direct them to Scott Wark at S.Wark@Warwick.ac.uk.

Figurations is organised by the People Like You: Contemporary Figures of Personalisation project. People Like You is a group of scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, and artists who explore how personalisation actually works. We research personalisation in four areas: personalised medicine and care; data science; digital cultures; and interactive arts practices.

People Like You is funded by a Collaborative Award in the Medical Humanities and Social Sciences from The Wellcome Trust, 2018-2022. It involves researchers located at Goldsmiths College, University of London; Imperial College London; and The University of Warwick.