ECREA WEEKLY digest ARTICLES

November 1, 2019

Coventry University

Deadline: July 31, 2019

MeCCSA Local and Community Media Network

Abstracts are invited for a one-day symposium examining the current landscape for local and community media. The event is the first organised by the MeCCSA Local and Community Media Network and aims to bring together scholars and practitioners together to reappraise the sector as it undergoes rapid change and disruption. Keynote sessions will be delivered by Professor Bridgette Wessels from Glasgow University, researcher in the REGPRESS project, which is based in Sweden and which is examining the role of regional and local press, and Matthew Barraclough, head of BBC Local News Partnerships.

Papers which examine any area of the above are welcome and may include both theoretical reflections and practice-based interventions to consider the range of responses to this disruption and how those relate to the perceived role and purpose of local and community media.

Areas which might be addressed include, but are not limited to:

• Local democratic processes
• Social justice
• Information provision
• Local media ecosystems
• Communities
• Policy makers
• Media entrepreneurs and emerging business models
• Alternative local and community media
• Interventions, for instance the Local Democracy Reporting Service, Facebook-funded Community News Project.

Papers will be peer-reviewed. Please send an abstract of no more than 300 words and a cover sheet with a brief biographical note, your institutional affiliation (where relevant) and your contact details (including your email address). Abstracts should be sent to network chair r.matthews@coventry.ac.uk. Please address any queries to the same address in the first instance.

Closing date for proposals: July 31 2019. You will be notified of the acceptance of your paper by early September.

The event will be held at Coventry University in the Midlands of the UK on Friday, November 1, 2019. A nominal fee of £10 will be charged for attendance. A limited number of travel grants will also be available to enable attendance by PG/ECR researchers. Please state on your abstract if you would like to be considered for a grant and the amount requested.

January 8-11, 2020

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

Deadline (extended): July 1, 2019

CMRC Conference in Collaboration with SIMAGINE

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 July 1, 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

University of Toulouse 

Deadline: June 24, 2019

The Political Economy of Digital Platform Regulation  Laboratoire d’Études et de Recherches Appliquées en Sciences Sociales  (LERASS),  University Paul Sabatier Toulouse 3 

Job Title: Marie Skłodowska-Curie ITN Early Stage Researcher 

Full Time and Fixed Term: up to 34 Months 

Research Fellow:€41,425 gross p.a. (before national taxation and deductions) 

Start Date: October 2019 

The Laboratoire d’Études et de Recherches Appliquées en Sciences  Sociales (LERASS) at University Paul Sabatier Toulouse 3 (UPS) is  offering a PhD position to develop research on the Political Economy of  Digital Platform Regulation. The researcher will advance the theoretical  understanding of, and best-practice approaches to, the regulation of  digital platforms such as social networking sites and search engines  (Google, Facebook, Apple, Snapchat, Twitter etc.) by public authorities. 

Applicants are asked to consider the nature, scope and strategies of the different actors (governments, platforms, EU, NGOs, pressure groups,  media) that are involved in discussing, imposing and implementing the  regulatory framework on digital platforms and infomediation services  when it comes to issues such as disinformation, hate speech, online  propaganda, media pluralism and political polarization. Applications are  welcome from journalism studies, media studies, sociology, economics,  political science, internet studies, law and all related fields. 

The successful candidate will undertake full-time PhD research. In  addition to fulfilling the requirements of the training programme of the  University of Toulouse doctoral school in social sciences and  humanities, the successful candidate will receive a personalized  training plan to develop skills for future employment in academia or  industry. This will include participation in JOLT training events (to  develop domain specific skills, general research skills, and  transferable skills) and secondments/work- placements in different  research environments. All costs are fully funded (100% employment) by  the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, which also offers highly  attractive salary and allowance conditions. 

Requirements (in addition to those outlined above): 

• A Master’s degree or equivalent (300 ECTS credits) 
• English language proficiency (IELTS 6.5) 

Requirements and Application Details 

Eligibility Requirements:All applicants should ensure and demonstrate  compliance with the Marie Skłodowska-Curie rules: (1) Applicants may be  of any nationality, but must not have resided in or carried out their  main activity (work or study) in the host country (FRANCE) for more than  12 of the 36 months prior to recruitment. This condition excludes short  stays such as holidays. (2) Applicants must have less than four years  research experience (full-time equivalent) and must not have obtained a  PhD. Registration on taught programmes such as undergraduate degrees or  taught Masters degrees do not count as research experience. (3)  Applicants must be willing to travel for two secondments or  work-placements (where each is approximately 4 weeks in duration).  Salary and Benefits:The Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) offers highly competitive and attractive salary and working conditions. These  include a living allowance/salary (€41,425 gross per annum), a mobility  allowance (€7,200 gross per annum), and a family allowance if applicable (€6,000 gross per annum). Expenses such as registration fees and  training are covered by the JOLT network. PLEASE NOTE: In line with MSCA  regulations, the values above relate to total employer gross values and  are subject to both employer and employee tax and charges. Please see  http://www.euraxess.fr/france/information-assistancefor further details. 

Responsibilities of the Early Stage Researcher 

• To manage and carry out the research project within the project  timescale.
 
• To write a PhD dissertation.  
• To participate in research and training activities within the JOLT  network. 
• To publish articles and deliver presentations to the research community 
• To participate in public outreach and engagement.  
• To participate in JOLT meetings and the organisation of JOLT events.  
• To liaise with relevant research staff and students  
• To write progress reports and prepare results for publication.  
• To attend progress and management meetings as required. 

How to Apply:

Please submit the following documents by email to  lerass.jolt@iut-tlse3.frcompiled in the following order into a single  PDF file: Research Proposal outlining your understanding of the topic,  proposed theoretical approach, methodology, field for empirical  research, and potential significance/contribution to existing state of  the art (max. 2000 words); Curriculum Vitae (including two referees’  contact details); Certificates/Transcripts of Degree and/or Master degree. 

Closing Date for Applications: 24 June 2019. Selected candidates will be  invited for interview between June 26 and 28. Interviews may be  conducted in person or electronically. 

University of Technology,  Tallinn

Deadlines for applications: 15th of June

Interviews will be scheduled  soon after. Priority will be given to applications received on or before  June 15 2019.

Start of appointment: September 2019 

Ragnar Nurkse Department of Innovation and Governance (RND) is one of  the largest, most internationalized and leading social science research  centres in Estonia. As part of Tallinn University of Technology  (TalTech) and its School of Business and Governance, RND functions at  the intersection of technological and social science research. 

The emergence of big data era has led to serious discussions about  social datafication – i.e. the socio-cultural consequences of big data  on societies, individual lives, and governmental organizations. Positive  consequences like control of spatial mobilities through algorithms  and negative consequences like discrimination through datafied decisions  are central in these discussions. Estonian society with its  contradictions – a highly digitalized environment, moderate use of open  data, low awareness of algorithmic control and privacy concerns – offers  a highly attractive environment for studying the societal consequences  of big data, algorithms, and AI. 

Key tasks: 

• The main task of the doctoral researcher is to carry out research in  data studies in the field of spatial mobilities (e.g. refugees, highly  skilled immigrants, e-residents, ‘data rich’ and ‘data poor’ mobile groups). 

• Participation in the research activities in the domains of 

(1) data justice - how to avoid discrimination through data, automatized  inequalities, racial bias, and movement towards more just data practices; 

(2) awareness of algorithmic control (the perspectives of data subjects  from the Global South, data rich and data poor ethnic / mobile groups), 

(3) data governance (use of social scoring, AI, machine learning methods  in governmental institutions for controlling mobility). 

• Participation in the teaching activities of the research group,  including supervision of students; 

• Participation in the administrative functions of the research group; 

Qualification requirements: 

• MA or equivalent in social sciences (in the fields of sociology,  public administration, media and communication, human geography, or a  related discipline); 

• Excellent knowledge of research methods, including quantitative  (survey, mobility tracking, basic and advanced statistics, social  networks analysis) or qualitative methods (interviewing, textual  analysis, visual analysis methods). Knowledge of digital or  computational research methods are advantageous. 

Specifics & Benefits: 

We offer the chance to do high-level research in an internationally  recognized research team; opportunities for conference visits;  networking with leading universities in the field of data studies;  publishing in high-level journals in the field. 

The position is fixed-term (4 years) 

Start date: 1 September 2019 (or as soon as possible). 

The position is financed from the state scholarship and from the  projects, which in total provides monthly income up to 1200 EUR net  (including 20% national income tax, Estonian national health, social  security and pension payments). 

Application requirements: 

• Cover letter 

• Curriculum vitae 

• Research proposal (5 pages) 

When applying for the 1st time for a position in TalTech, duplicate of 

the required  diploma (MA) or other document providing evidence of the necessary  qualification. 

For more information on TalTech, see www.taltech.ee  

For more information on RND, see www.taltech.ee/nurkse 

 For more details on the position, please contact: 

Dr. Anu Masso, Associate Professor in Big Data in Social Sciences, 

Ragnar NurkseDepartment of Innovation and Governance, anu.masso@taltech.ee 

November 15-16, 2019

University of Coimbra - Institute for Philosophical Studies

Deadline: July 1, 2019

http://www.uc.pt/fluc/uidief

Português / English

The task of tracing the new frontiers of the political implies a critical effort that faces a double difficulty: first of all, the confrontation between contemporary political theory and the virtual speed of the present that results in a complex delimitation and circumscription of a new hermeneutic horizon of the public space; and a second obstacle that consists of the construction of the concept of Cyberpolitics itself that, by its paradigmatic nature, involves a transformation and metamorphosis which we will also try to map. This effort will require a genealogical investigation into the concept of Cyberpolitics which derives from Cyberculture studies, but also the mapping of its different levels and fields of significance. This work-in-progress notion, in the crossroads of politics and aesthetics, will be challenged different perspectives. The analysis on the construction of the concept of Cyberpolitics, which will permit us to address the changes in the political regarding its technological implications in reshaping the public space, will also allow us to underline the notion of crisis as an operating concept. The current political and economic problems of the western world seem to indicate a possible cyberpolitical shock. The clash is probably due to the possible paradigm shift. We know from history that our fundamental confrontation is with the unimaginable, in the same way that for man of the Middle Ages the political organization of the present would be unthinkable.

Consequently, the foundation of political imagination is freedom. Are we ready to imagine the consequences of the installation of the cyberpolitical paradigm? Will Cyberpolitics, in its promise to install a second nature, constitute a substantial change? Is it a second nature towards a new political anthropology? Or are we just witnessing a change of medium that can blur the border between freedom and alienation? In fact, technology and new media are the central conceptual characters in the political beginning of the 21st century. Cyberpolitics is the concept that can help us understand this paradigmatic change in the present that will certainly imply a review of all the categories of the legal and political building. In order to establish a transdisciplinary dialogue, with contributions from the entire spectrum of the social and human sciences, the submission of proposals, on the following topics is particularly encouraged:

• Theoretical foundations: philosophy of technology, political theory, etc.
• E-Democracy an Open Government
• E-governance: theory , practice, case studies
• Technological revolutions?
• The new digital world of the Machines, A.I. and Singularity
• Megapolis: big cities, smart cities. From transportation to housing, etc.
• Election and campaign: big data and the algorithm behavioral paradigm
• Future: utopia, dystopia and other political visions
• Political imagination: landscapes of the constitutional law
• Science and technic
• Anthropocene
• Refoundation of institutions: University, Hospital, Factory, Court, etc
• New political economics. Disruptive new horizons
• Robots and humans: challenges to citizenship and the political economy
• Cyberwars, cybersecurity, Digital and media Wars
• Techno cultures and the new threshold of art
• Digital cities: overlapping and merging analogic an virtual
• Cybercities: architecture and politics
• Cybersecurity: espionage, surveillance and trust in the new era
• Sex, legal and moral affairs
• Fascination and obsession in the Cyberculture world
• Space, cosmos, new horizons and the rebirth of adventure
• Sex politics of gender and new emotions
• Entertainment industry and political regulation
• Theoretical perspectives: Bernard Stiegler, Pierre Levy, etc.
• Arts and literature: visions of the future.

Abstracts should be sent to this email address: constantinomar@gmail.com

They must not exceed 500 words with a small Biographical note, and may be submitted in Portuguese or English. Presentations will be 20 minutes in Portuguese or English.

Conference proceedings will be published in e-book format only in English. Participation and attendance is free. More information about the conference and the submission of proposals can be found at this address http://www.uc.pt/fluc/uidief.

IMPORTANT DATES:

• Submission: until 1 July 2019
• Notification of the decision: 30 July 2019

University of Coimbra - Institute for Philosophical Studies

http://www.uc.pt/fluc/uidief

Organization:

Constantino Pereira Martins

FCSH-NOVA University of Lisbon / IEF - University of Coimbra / FCT –

Foundation for Science and Technology

http://www.uc.pt/fluc/uidief/members/CPM

constantinomar@gmail.com

Advisory Committee:

• José Bragança de Miranda (Nova University of Lisbon)
• Lucas E. Misseri (Alicante University)
• Diogo Pires Aurélio (Lusófona University)

October 1 2019 

Ulster University, Northern Ireland

Deadline: July 22, 2019

Organiser: Cira Palli-Aspero Contact details memoryresistance@gmail.com Register via email

Keynote Speaker: Professor Graham Dawson, Professor in Historical Cultural Studies, University of Brighton

We invite submissions to our one-day, postgraduate interdisciplinary workshop supported by TJI and INCORE, at the Ulster University on 1st October 2019 9.30 am – 5.30 pm at Ulster University, Belfast.

This workshop explores the role of memory as a form of resistance in conflicts. It aims to widen the conversation about how individuals, groups, communities, civil or state organisations, and societies understand and actively engage with resistance through remembering and/or forgetting. In societies embedded in conflict, the accounts represented, reconstructed, and narrated through the recollection of memory, may become a form of resistance. These initiatives might be promoted by individuals or groups; from spontaneous stimuli to a well-developed strategy aiming to portray this element of resistance.

In these lines, memory can be found in museums, memorials, rituals, physical sites, or archives, but it can also involve many other fields and disciplines that engage in remembrance. Thus, it can be found in historical narratives, political discourse, urban planning, music, painting, literature, or films, among many others.

Within the scope of the workshop theme: “Remembering during conflict: memory as a form of resistance”, important questions and areas of exploration may involve, among others:

• How does memory operate as a form of resistance?
• What processes does memory (as a form of resistance) entail, foster and encourage?
• What are the real or perceived outcomes of using memory as a form of resistance?
• Who uses memory (as a form of resistance) and for what purposes?
• Does the time matter? Is there a right time for memory to be used? How does the use of memory vary in different stages of the conflict?

Abstract Submission

In this workshop, we are inviting all range of creative inputs, from academic papers, and poster presentations to photo exhibitions, videos, documentaries and/or other forms of arts. For all different types of input, we welcome abstracts of no more than 300 words. Abstract should address the following:

Brief outline of the work in progress

How does your work fit in the theme of the workshop?

A short bio and contact details

Abstracts (300 words) should be submitted by email to memoryresistance@gmail.com by July 22, 2019.

Application is open to PhD researchers and Early Career Researchers from all disciplines. We particularly encourage interdisciplinary, creative, international and intersectional research.

We wish to provide a supportive and inclusive space for fruitful debates and exchanges with the contributions of academics and practitioners from Northern Ireland. In the workshop, we will have leading academics to chair the panels; and members of the community sector to contribute to discussions from the WAVE Trauma Centre, Healing Through Remembering, and the Ulster Museum. All participants in this workshop will have the chance to test out ideas in a safe and friendly environment. They will also be networking with their peers in the field. We consider this workshop as an opportunity to establish active working groups to keep developing new ideas around the themes of this workshop.

The participants will have the opportunity to communicate their research not only in the framework of the workshop but also to a non-academic audience through videos. As part of an initiative to engage non-academic audience with academic research we are planning to present the results of the workshop in a video format at the ESRC Festival of Social Science that will take place in Northern Ireland in November 2019. To do so, we will record the participants who are willing to help us on this project, on a one-minute Q&A. All the answers will be compiled in a short video that will be screened in the ESRC festival of Social Sciences.

In order to encourage participants with limited resources, a small number of travel bursaries are available. More details on this coming soon.

Please do get in touch ( memoryresistance@gmail.com) if you have any ideas or questions you would like to discuss.

Organizing Committee

• Cira Palli-Aspero (Transitional Justice Institute & Law School, Ulster University)
• Eilish Boschert (School of Applied Social and Policy Sciences, Ulster University)
• Laney Lenox (School of Applied Social and Policy Sciences, Ulster University)
• Nisan Alici (Transitional Justice Institute & Law School, Ulster University)

Intedisciplinary Political Studies (Special Issue)

Deadline: June 22, 2019

A growing literature on ontological security has allowed authors to explore the link between the self-narrative of a state and its sense of being in the world by situating political communities in space and time. However, when an event disrupts, questions, contradicts, or challenges the dominant self-narrative of a state, the state’s identity becomes dislocated from its privileged position as it has never been fixed to begin with. Crisis then re-politicizes what had become common sense discourse, and creates demands for action, which could evolve to violence. In such instances, ‘memory must be defended’, as noted by Maria Mälksoo, inspired by Foucault’s ‘society must be defended’. Conceptualized in this way, the concept of defending memory and how it relates to securitization of memory in context of crisis opens up a wide range of possibilities for thinking about collective – that is, the state’s – identity formation beyond the identity/alterity nexus of self/other and more closely linked to the notion of ontological security, as well as within securitization theory, and at the same time linking it to politicization, and hence change.

This Special Issue of IdPS aims at exploring understudied dimensions of mnemonical insecurity in global politics in order to address the following questions: How do mnemonic conflicts emerge and develop across space and time? What kind of strategies political actors apply to engage in mnemonic conflicts? What kind of events allows for desecuritization and politicization of memory? How do mnemonic conflicts occur and express themselves in national, regional, and global contexts?

If you are interested in writing an article for this special issue, please send an email with your name and institutional affiliation, an abstract of approximately 250-300 words, and a short bio of no more than 200 words to the special issues editors (dfbecker@usc.edu, dbudryte@ggc.edu, eresende@esg.br) by June 22 2019.

The first draft of the article will be expected to be delivered at the end of September (max. 8,000 words with references). Contributions from the Global South or addressing issues in the Global South are especially welcomed.

Teaching Media Quarterly

Deadline (extended): July 1, 2019

Teaching Media Quarterly is an open access journal dedicated to sharing approaches to media topics and concepts. Please consider submitting a lesson plan to our current call, Teaching with Reality Television. We also have an ongoing open call for lesson plans. You can access our journal here.

Call for Lesson Plans: Teaching with Reality Television

From The Real World to The Bachelor, the reality TV genre provides unique insight into how television is changing, while also drawing on familiar generic conventions and modes of address. Scholars continue to trace its effects on marketing and advertisers, above and below-the-line labor practices, multi-platform storytelling, fan labor, and questions of governmentality and surveillance, among many others. Teaching with reality television allows instructors to discuss the rise of convergence culture and the role of new media, making for a case study likely to resonate with students through their engagement with television and related social media. Teaching Media Quarterly is interested in learning and sharing how instructors teach with reality television and why.

Contributors are welcome to consider the following questions:

• How do you historicize reality television in the classroom?
• Which scholarly texts do you assign in conjunction with particulay reality television programs?
• If you ask students to create their own reality programming, what does the assignment look like?
• How do you attend to questions of difference in reality television - gender, sexuality, race, ability, class, etc.?
•  How do you teach the relationship between reality television and neoliberalism?
• How do you teach the relationship between reality television and feminized media?
• How does reality television lend itself to political economy analyses?
• What is the relationship between streaming services (Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, etc.) and reality television?
• How do you teach the relationship between reality television and other forms of media (social media, new media, etc.)?

The deadline for submissions is July 1st.

Loughborough University

Deadline: July 3, 2019

We invite applications to do a PhD in any area of O3C’s research foci.

O3C: Improving the Health of Our Online Civic Culture

Established in 2018 with an award from Loughborough University's Adventure Research Programme, the Online Civic Culture Centre (O3C) applies concepts and methods from social science and information science to understand the role of social media in shaping our civic culture. Led by Professor Andrew Chadwick, it includes a doctoral training programme consisting of a team of ten academic supervisors drawn from the disciplines of communication, information science, social psychology, and sociology. The CDT enables interdisciplinary teams of researchers and PhD students to work together on issues of misinformation, disinformation, and the rise of hate speech and intolerance online. It develops evidence-based knowledge to mitigate the democratically-dysfunctional aspects of social media. It also identifies the positive civic engagement benefits of social media.

For this studentship, we invite applications to do a PhD in any area of O3C’s research foci.

Applicants must prepare a 1500-word research proposal outlining their project.

Entry requirements: At least a 2:1 Honours degree (or equivalent) by start of project. A Master's degree will be an advantage.

Funding information:

Open to UK/EU and International graduates with backgrounds in relevant disciplines. For UK/EU students the studentship provides a tax free stipend of £15,009 per year for three years and covers tuition fees at the UK/EU rate. International students may apply: in this case the studentship will cover only the International tuition fee only. You will register for 1 October 2019 or 1 January 2020.

Contact details:

Deirdre Lombard, Postgraduate Administrator

Email address: D.Lombard@lboro.ac.uk

Telephone number: +44 (0)1509 223879

How to apply:

Online at http://www.lboro.ac.uk/study/apply/research. Under programme name, select Social Sciences. Clearly mark your application "Online Civic Culture CDT." Please quote reference number: OCC19-P3X

Deadline: July 3, 2019.

Special issue on Cultural Literacies in Transition

Deadline: August 15, 2019

Guest editor: Kris Rutten

Theme:

On-going public and academic debate has focused on the importance of knowledge about culture and the arts, what is generally referred to as “cultural literacy”. Often the debate focuses on an alleged “lack” of such knowledge. Whereas traditional approaches to cultural literacy emphasized the importance of a shared national culture, the reading of books and the literary canon, in recent years there has been an increasing focus on what cultural “literacies” can imply within our current globalised, pluralized and media saturated societies. While the conception that the arts constitute (Western) High Culture has for a long time already been strongly criticized from a broad range of perspectives, this idea is still reflected in more traditional approaches to the importance and functions of culture and the arts. However, contemporary societal transitions raise a number of important questions about the specific content of cultural literacies (i.e. what is still considered to be relevant and valuable knowledge about culture and the arts?), about the potential functions of culture and the arts for society (i.e. what is considered to be the societal and educational value of knowledge about and engagement with the arts?) and about the specific role of cultural institutions today (i.e. how do cultural institutions address their roles as mediator and go-between of knowledge about the arts?).

This special issue seeks to reframe the discussion about cultural literacies from a number of different perspectives. (1) The concept of literacy itself has been studied as a normative concept, which is embedded in specific perspectives on economic progress, political democracy, and social, cultural and educational mobility. This has been referred to as the so-called “literacy myth” and there has been a growing body of research that critically addresses the question of what it implies to “become literate” and on whose terms, for example in relation to notions such as decolonisation and intersectionality. This implies that if we want to explore cultural literacies as important “equipment” for people to navigate the complexities of contemporary society, we need to extend its content beyond traditional conceptions of culture and the arts so as to be able to include a wider range of relevant dimensions. (2) What counts as a legitimate argument when discussing the value of knowledge about the arts is always related to particular perspectives on its societal functions. This implies we need a critical examination of the claims that are made within the public debate for the “importance” and “value” of culture and the arts for society and therefore we also need to focus on the larger societal context in which this debate is taking place. (3) If we explore the question of how cultural literacies, conceptualised from a critical perspective, can be enhanced by focusing on the potential of cultural institutions, then this implies we need to focus on the increasingly changing and sometimes also contested roles of cultural institutions as traditional mediators of culture and the arts.

For this special issue, we therefore seek contributions that explore how cultural literacies are currently defined, practiced, contested and negotiated in relation to different contexts by focusing on the following discussions:

• What is currently considered to be valuable knowledge about culture, art and aesthetics? How is this knowledge being challenged and how is it redefined? What does this imply for art education and for the curriculum in general?
• How are the societal functions of culture and the arts framed in the public and academic debate? What are the societal and educational values that are attributed to knowledge about and engagement with the arts?
• How is the role of cultural and art institutions changing as traditional mediators of knowledge about culture and the arts? What new forms of art mediation are emerging or how can such new forms be conceptualized?

Submission guidelines:

Deadline for abstracts: Please send your abstracts of 300 words by August 15th 2019 to Kris.Rutten@UGent.be.

Notification of selected abstracts by: September 1st 2019.

Deadline for article submission: based on the selection of the abstracts full papers will need to be submitted by: November 30th 2019.

Information and instructions for authors: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/RCRC

All completed manuscripts MUST be uploaded onto the online manuscript portal Scholar One. Go to Critical Arts on the Taylor and Francis site. There is an option on the top left pane of the screen that says ‘submit’, select this then click ‘submit online’ and follow the prompts.

Further inquiries about the special issue: Kris.Rutten@UGent.be

Alternatively, contact the Critical Arts editorial office at criticalarts@ukzn.ac.za or the editor-in-chief, Keyan Tomaselli at keyant@uj.ac.za

Critical Arts prides itself in publishing original, readable, and theoretically cutting edge articles. For more information on the history and the orientation of the journal, as well as guidelines for authors, and legal and editorial procedures, please visit: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/authors/rcrcauth.asp

Critical Arts is now published six times annually and is indexed in the International Bibliography of Social Sciences (IBSS) and the ISI Social Science Index and Arts & Humanities Citation Index and other indexes.