New Sciences of Protection: Designing Safe Living

New Sciences of Protection: Designing Safe Living IAS Annual Research Programme 2007-08 CALL FOR PAPERS

An interdisciplinary international conference to be held at Lancaster University.

Thursday, 10 July – Saturday, 12 July 2008

This conference investigates ‘protection’ at the intersections of security, sciences, technologies, markets and design. It considers three central questions:

n How is ‘safe living’ conceived of by designers, artist-writers, policy makers and regulators, scientist-engineers, social scientists and humanities scholars, and how do these conceptualisations of ‘safe living’ engage with sciences and technologies of protection?

n Is ‘safe living’ achievable, and how do conceptual, practical, political and cultural practices of design engage with sciences and technologies of protection to achieve ‘safe living’?

n And if ‘safe living’ were achievable, would it be desirable – as a politics, as an ethic, as a day-to-day way of life? Would ‘new sciences of protection’ make us safe or would they commodify us and/or multiply our fears and anxieties? Who/what would benefit from new sciences of protection, and who/what would be targeted as the unsafe and therefore as the unprotectable? And what are the mechanisms for this allocation of protection and 'safe living' -- socially, culturally, politically, and economically?

Keynote Speakers

Professor Anthony Dunne (Royal College of Art, London, UK and dunneandraby designs)

Fiona Raby (Royal College of Art, London, UK and dunneandraby designs)

Professor Susan Silby (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, USA)

Professor Lucy Suchman (Lancaster University, UK)

Professor Richard Buchanan (Carnegie-Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA)

Lynn Hershman Leeson (Director of ‘Strange Culture’)

Benjamin H. Bratton (Director Advanced Strategies Group at Yahoo! and UCLA Design|Media Arts)

We invite papers and presentations on such topics as:

Designing safe life/designing safe living (e.g., synthetic biology, genetics, designing safe citizens); Designing safe places (environmental futures, workplace safety, home/homeland security, the built environment); Distributing protection and 'safe living' (RFID and the design of safe borders, targeting unsafe citizens/environments/species/systems/procedures, designing 'the exception'); 'Design noir'; Designer security: fashion and new sciences of protection; Performing 'protection' and 'safe living'; Design, law, justice; Global brands and new spaces of consumption and control design methodologies, protocols, and procedures the safety of design as a practice and a method; Designing safe images/images of safety and protection; The codes and conduct of 'safe living'; Control, sustainable security, and the emergence of eco-cities safe/unsafe futures; Design, emotion, protection the pleasures of (un)safe design; Design and public engagement -- where should the design debate take place?

Abstracts should include a title, medium of presentation, contact details of the author(s) (name, postal address, email), and a summary of no more than 300 words. Please submit them to Anne-Marie Mumford at a.mumford@lancaster.ac.uk no later than 15 April, 2008. For future information about the conference please visit: http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/ias/annualprogramme/protection/conference/index.htm

Carfree Cities Conference

Worldchanging has news on the upcoming June 2008 Carfree Cities Conference:

Portland, arguably America’s greenest city, will host the 2008 conference Towards Carfree Cities VIII: Rethinking Mobility, Rediscovering Proximity, from June 16-20, 2008. The conference will bring together activists and professionals from around the world to share strategies for building sustainable transportation systems and the transforming cities into human-scaled environments rich in public space and community life.

This year is the first time carfree activists, planners, and thinkers will gather in North America. The conference will showcase recent strides made in Portland’s urban landscape and teach participants about the city’s approach to sustainable living. Previous conference sites have included: Lyon, France; Timisoara, Romania; Prague, Czech Republic; Berlin, Germany; Budapest, Hungary; Bogotá, Colombia; and Istanbul, Turkey. Now America gets a chance to show our stuff.

The conference is the annual gathering of the World Carfree Network, a Prague-based organization formed in 1997 as an offshoot of the venerable Carbusters magazine.

Read full post for registration - 'Carfree Cities Conference'
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The 'Mobile City'

Here is a conference I thought worthy of mention, especially as it deals with many topics near to this blog, and has some interesting speakers too - it's called 'The Mobile City' conference on the 27 & 28 February 2008 at
NAi (Netherlands Architecture Institute) Rotterdam, The Netherlands

See - www.themobilecity.nl

"The Mobile City" is a two-day conference about locative & mobile technologies, urban culture and identity. The Mobile City brings academics, architects, urban professionals and media designers together to address the question: what happens to urban culture when physical and digital spaces merge? Keynote speakers are Stephen Graham, Tim Cresswell, Malcolm McCullough and Christian Nold.

Background
The physical, geographical city with its piazza’s, its neighbourhoods and crossings intersects with the ‘virtual space’ of electronic communication-, information- and observation-networks of GSM, GPS, CCTV, UMTS, WIFI, RFID, etc. At the same time, the domain of digital space is increasingly becoming physical, an “internet of things” is emerging. Another example is the rise of 'pervasive games', digital games with a physical component in urban space. Is it still useful or even possible to talk about the city as being only physical? Or about the digital world as purely ‘virtual’ (in the sense of 'not real' or immaterial)? The physical city and the spaces of digital technologies merge into a new “hybrid space”.

Conference questions
Locative and mobile media can be understood as interfaces between the digital domain and the city, as bridges between the social processes that formerly took place in more separated domains (digital or physical) but now are spilling over into each other. The Mobile City will ask the following questions:

• From a theoretical point of view, what are useful concepts to talk about the blurring/merging of physical and digital spaces?

• From a critical perspective, what does the emergence of locative and mobile media mean for urban culture, citizenship, and identities?

• From a professional point of view, what does all this mean for the work of urban professionals (architects, designers, planners), media designers, and academics?

The full program text is available at our website, www.themobilecity.nl/background

There is both a 'Call for Participation - Workshops' & a 'Call for Participation - Project Presentations'

* Stephen Graham - Professor of Human Geography, Durham University
* Tim Cresswell - Professor of Geography, University of London
* Malcolm McCullough - Associate Professor University of Michigan
* Christian Nold - Independent artist and lecturer based in London

More info, call for participants, and registration: www.themobilecity.nl.
The conference fee is € 25,-

Conference organizers: Martijn de Waal (RUG), Michiel de Lange (EUR), Oene Dijk (NAi).
Info@themobilecity.nl
www.themobilecity.nl

Conference Call - The Social

CONFERENCE THEME & CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS
THE SOCIAL - ONLINE, MOBILE AND UNPLUGGED SOCIAL NETWORKING
Futuresonic 2008
Urban Festival of Art, Music & Ideas
1-4 May, Manchester, UK
The Futuresonic international conference and the Social Technologies Summit invite proposals for talks, presentations, workshops and session themes. Submissions of innovative formats for social interaction are encouraged.
The conference theme is The Social - Online, Mobile and Unplugged Social Networking.
The Futuresonic conference is a place where important international discussions take place. The conference will bring together leading figures to unpick the hype around the latest technological zeitgeist, broaden the debate, and propose and explore a critical understanding of social technologies.
Deadline for conference submissions -- 5pm 18th December 2007
http://www.futuresonic.com/submissions-conference
See also -- A GBP 5000 commission plus many other opportunities are available
in the Futuresonic 2008 Art, Music & EVNTS calls for submissions.

http://www.futuresonic.com/getinvolved

THE CONFERENCE
Futuresonic brings 500 opinion formers, futurologists, artists, technologists and scientists from the digital culture, music and art communities to Manchester for four days of seminars, workshops and events.
At the heart of the festival is the internationally-acclaimed Futuresonic conference, and its focal point the Social Technologies Summit.

The 2008 conference will explore the theme of The Social - Online, Mobile and Unplugged Social Networking. The conference will bring together leading figures to broaden the debate, and propose and explore a critical understanding of social technologies.
Submissions are invited that explore the new social spaces and the social implications of technologies for the many different kinds of people who make, use and are affected by them.
Computers have become social interfaces for sharing digital media and collaborating to build online communities and folksonomies. Social technologies create an extension of social space, and new ways for people to find the stuff that interests them, link up with others, and share. They include tools and applications that enable people to connect, share and interact, such as blogs, instant messenger, social software such as Flickr, FaceBook and Jaiku, and even the internet itself. 'Social technologies' can also refer to technologies created and maintained by social networks, such as communities of developers and users working collaboratively with open source tools.
What distinguishes social technologies is that they are bottom up and many-to-many instead of one-to-one or one-to-many. They can be seen as a part of a major cultural and social shift. And yet at the same time we also see how electronic communication can isolate us, as more and more people drown in a deluge of email that generates stress, even reducing IQ - puncturing the rose-tinted view that life is simply 'more social.' Additionally, 'online communities' are based upon an artificial equivalence between 'users' which obscures power relationships and issues of ownership.

http://www.futuresonic.com/submissions-conference

CALL FOR CONFERENCE SUBMISSIONS
Futuresonic now invites submissions to the Futuresonic conference and the Social Technologies Summit.
Proposals for talks, presentations and workshops plus also session themes are invited. Submissions of innovative formats for social interaction are encouraged.
Deadline for conference submissions -- 5pm 18th December 2007
For details on submitting to the conference visit
http://www.futuresonic.com/submissions-conference

The Politics of Proximity: Mobility/Immobility in Practice

The Politics of Proximity: Mobility/Immobility in Practice

Session Convener: Giuseppina Pellegrino, University of Calabria (Italy) - Department of Sociology and Political Science

Conference website - www.iisoc.org/iis2008

Intersections, overlaps and relations between globality and locality can be framed through the encompassing concept of mobility, which fosters both a powerful discourse in multiple settings and a renewed perspective in looking at socio-political transformations in the 21st century. Following John Urry and others, the sociology of mobility can be conceived as the study of mixtures and hybridations of people, objects, artefacts, information. Mobility (and immobility as its opposite, complementary side) involves multiple encounters and new inclusions and exclusions: proximity, closeness and togetherness increasingly depends on how mobility is articulated through the ever-present influence of infrastructures.

This raises some important questions:

- What does it mean to be mobile/immobile?

- Is mobility a resource or a boundary?

- How is ‘being on the move’ accomplished?

- How is the sense of time, space, global and local shaped through mobile practices?

- practices and settings where ‘being mobile’ is a ‘must’;

- mobilities and information distribution;

- mobilities and communicational practices;

- face-to-face/mediated proximity.

Abstracts of papers should be sent by 15th January to both the emails:

gpellegrinous@yahoo.com, g.pellegrino@unical.it

matterealities, mobilities, innovation

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION
======================

matterealities, mobilities, innovation.

A growing body of studies show that in the detailed how of ‘how matter comes to matter’ (Barad 2003) the social and the material are inextricably linked. However, the very practices that join also often conceal such entanglement - in everyday practice, politics, science and design. In this interdisciplinary workshop we seek to explore a particular set of connections between 'matterealities', mobilities and innovation:

Matterealities: If social-material realities or orders are made, two questions arise: ‘How are they made?’ and ‘How could they be made ‘better’?’ Science and technology studies and ethnomethodological studies address the first, and – sometimes also the second question (e.g. through socio-technical innovation and ‘engaged’ research (Sismondo 2007). However, while these studies can powerfully draw our attention to the entanglement of the social and the material, they often struggle to escape the dualisms entrenched in our languages and epistemic practices. Non-representational philosophy and Barad’s agential realism in particular, open up new possibilities for a study of ‘intra-action’, not only by focusing on how epistemic practices and 'pre-cognitive' 'matereal' ethnomethods of embodied conduct make material agential forces ‘speak’ and matter, but also by formulating a new physical epistem-ontology. The convergence of increasingly powerful and small computing, sensor and actuator technologies with everyday materials, including the clothes we wear, the cars we drive, and the places we live, play and work in – presents a particularly rich challenge for this approach. Whereas research into socio-technical settings and practices has tended to look at human-computer interaction and 'the virtual' (cyberspace and life online), research must now also look towards the intra-actions of digital phenomena and the 'materealization' of socio-technical realities.

Mobilities: A new ‘movement-driven’ social science (Urry 2007) reveals movement, potential movement and blocked movement as constitutive of economic, social, political, environmental and material relations. Movement, momentum, and motion are also integral to epistemic practices. Moreover, they rely on and can reveal media (air, water) and infrastructural support (roads, cables, satellites, networks). Combining a focus on mobilities with studies of intra-action can make important aspects of the entanglement of the social and the material amenable to study.

Innovation: Can studies of how socio-material realities are made inform the making of ‘better’ realities? A first answer must be ‘No’, because by drawing attention to the entanglement of the social and the material, such studies show that it is difficult if not impossible to know what ‘better’ might mean, to go beyond the scale of ‘us, here and now’, let alone decide what steps would enable the matterealization of better futures (without treading loose an avalanche of unintended consequences). Yet, it is so tempting to think that ‘issues of social order and intelligibility must be understood before social problems can be intelligently addressed’ (Garfinkel 2002, p. 54) and that once such issues are better understood, social, material technical problems could be intelligently addressed. Experience from ethnomethodologically informed technology design reframes the ambition: First, by changing the way in which innovation is conceived of and achieved towards a more collaborative, iterative (pervasive and never-ending), interdisciplinary process (Suchman 1999), and second, by seeking to change the products of innovation, making technologies that support creative appropriation in the context of everyday innovation (e.g. Dourish 2001, Chalmers, PalCom). Agential realism opens up new possibilities for these approaches and provides an opportunity to widen the focus to other forms of socio-technical change.

In this workshop we bring together an interdisciplinary group of scholars and practitioners to fathom, formulate and shape these possibilities and opportunities.

IMPORTANT DATES
A maximum of 40 participants can be accepted. Registration takes place on a first come first served basis.

Registration will cost approximately £ 80.00. Details will be published on our website


A limited number of student bursaries are available. For information about these or an expression of interest please contact m.buscher(at)lancaster.ac.uk

‘CARS, COMFORTS AND CONTESTED FUTURES’

CEMORE SEMINAR ON ‘CARS, COMFORTS AND CONTESTED FUTURES’
September 21st 2007

Welcome and Buffet lunch at 1PM in The Institute for Advanced Studies, Lancaster University

SEMINAR to be held in A40 County South - cost £15.00

To register please email Pennie Drinkall (p.drinkall@lancaster.ac.uk) and send cheque or pay by card on the day.

1.30 Welcome/introduction to the main issues from John Urry, Director of CEMORE, Lancaster University

1.45 Greg Noble, Centre for Cultural Research, University of Western Sydney: 'Moored in Mobility: The ontology of automotive comfort'

'The promise of comfort is a key feature of consumer discourses around cars, although it is rarely given the status of the conventional marketing themes of style, performance and taste'.
3.00 tea coffee

3.15 Kingsley Dennis, CeMoRe Lancaster: 'Cities, Cars, Futures'

“Today we don’t really live in a civilisation, but in a mobilisation – of natural resources, people and products". Where once cities were the cradle of civilisation they are now becoming close to producing disastrous social instabilities and contributing to environmental decline. Cities too are the nodes from which mobility emanates"

4.30 Tim Dant, Sociology Dept, Lancaster University to lead discussion on the 2 papers
Chaired by Monika Buscher, CEMORE/Imagination at Lancaster/Sociology, Lancaster University
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CARS, COMFORTS AND CONTESTED FUTURES

CEMORE SEMINAR ON 'CARS, COMFORTS AND CONTESTED FUTURES' - September 21st 2007

Welcome and Buffet lunch at 1PM in The Institute for Advanced Studies, Lancaster University. SEMINAR to be held in A40 County South - cost £15.00
(online registration here)

1.30 welcome/introduction to the main issues from John Urry, Director of CEMORE, Lancaster University

1.45 Greg Noble, Centre for Cultural Research, University of Western Sydney: 'Moored in Mobility: The ontology of automotive comfort'
3.00 tea coffee

3.15 Kingsley Dennis, CeMoRe Lancaster: 'Cities, Cars, Futures'

4.30 Tim Dant, Sociology Dept, Lancaster University to lead discussion on the 2 papers

Chaired by Monika Buscher, CEMORE/Imagination at Lancaster/Sociology, Lancaster University

5.30 drink in bar

matterealities, mobilities, innovation

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION
======================

http://www.ist-palcom.org/activities/matterealities
________________________________________________
matterealities, mobilities, innovation. Karen Barad @ Lancaster ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In the detailed how of 'how matter comes to matter' (Barad 2003) the social is inextricably conjoined with the material. However, the very practices that join also often conceal such entanglement. In this interdisciplinary workshop we seek to explore a particular set of connections between 'matterealities', mobilities and innovation:

Matterealities: As new computing, sensor and actuator technologies become increasingly powerful and small, they converge with everyday materials, including the clothes we wear, the cars we drive, and the places we live, play and work in. Whereas research into socio-technical settings and practices has tended to look at 'the virtual' (cyberspace and life online), research must now also look towards the physical and to the 'materealization' of socio-technical reality. How can interdisciplinary insights and approaches come together productively and creatively?

Mobilities: A new 'movement-driven' social science (Urry 2007) is emerging, in which movement, potential movement and blocked movement are conceptualised as constitutive of economic, social, political, environmental and material relations.
How do mobilities depend on and, at the same time, help produce material infrastructures? How does matter move? How are material agencies mobilized? How can we mobilize interdisciplinary initiatives to investigate these questions?

Innovation: With everything in flux, viable and desirable innovation cannot be a top-down, mainly conceptual process. It has to be experimental and participatory, engaging all - material and human - agencies. Can studies of how matter comes to matter inform innovation?
Can they foster participation and bottom-up innovation?

For this workshop we invite participation from a broad field of interested parties, spanning the natural sciences, art, design, engineering, humanities, the social sciences, the public and commerical or industrial organizations.

IMPORTANT DATES
A maximum of 40 participants can be accepted. Registration takes place on a first come first served basis.

The deadline for registration is 12 October. Registration will cost approximately £ 80.00. Details will be published on our website:

http://www.ist-palcom.org/activities/matterealities

A limited number of student bursaries are available. For information about these or an expression of interest please contact m.buscher(at)lancaster.ac.uk

WITH ART BY
Fiona Jane Candy, UK - http://www.a-brand.co.uk Irene Janze and Anton Dekker, The Netherlands, http://home.tiscali.nl/burojanze/ Dr. Jennifer G. Sheridan, Alice Bayliss, Dr. Nick Bryan-Kinns http://www.jennifersheridan.com/

ORGANIZERS
Buscher, Monika, mobilities.lab, Lancaster University - m.buscher@lancaster.ac.uk Coulton, Paul, Infolab21, Lancaster University - p.coulton@lancaster.ac.uk Dennis, Kingsley, mobilities.lab, Lancaster University - k.dennis1@lancaster.ac.uk Hemment, Drew, Imagination@Lancaster - hemment@exchange.lancs.ac.uk Rooksby, John, Infolab21, Lancaster University - rooksby@comp.lancs.ac.uk Sangiorgi, Daniela, Imagination@Lancaster - d.sangiorgi@lancaster.ac.uk 

Cosmopolitan paradoxes

Cosmopolitan paradoxes:
Migration and emergent systems of transnational rights

Mediterranean Mobilities Network, CeMoRe: www.medmobilities.net

29 June 2007, 10:30-16:30

@ the Institute for Advanced Studies, Lancaster University

SPEAKERS

Professor Lydia Morris, Department of Sociology, University of Essex
‘Managing contradiction: Civic stratification and migrant rights in Europe’

Dr Liza Schuster, Department of Sociology, City University
‘The realities of the New Asylum paradigm’

Dr Eleni Hatzidimitriadou, European Centre for the Study of Migration and Social Care, University of Kent

‘Matters of agency and social transformation for migrant women from Mediterranean countries’

Dr Gabriella Lazaridis, Department of Sociology, University of Leicester

‘Social capital, agency and pathways to inclusion: The case of Albanian migrant women in Greece’

Please contact Pennie Drinkall if you would like to attend at p.drinkall@lancaster.ac.uk

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World Congress on Time, Frequency and Navigation

Geneva, Switzerland, is the focus for satellite navigation this week as it hosts the first World Congress on Time, Frequency and Navigation. The event runs from 29 May until 1 June:

There will in fact be two events held at the same location. The 11th European Navigation Conference – Global Navigation Satellite Systems (ENC–GNSS) will focus on both the present status of and future developments in navigation systems. The conference brings together the scientific community, private sector and international navigation organizations with the goal of sharing research ideas and promoting development in the field of navigation.

The European Frequency and Time Forum (EFTF) – Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Frequency Control Symposium (IEEE-FCS) joint meeting will be held concurrently.

Read more in 'World satellite navigation congress in Geneva'

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UK Social Network Conference

UK Social Network Conference:

13-14 July 2007
Queen Mary College
University of London
E1 4NS London
United Kingdom

The UK Social Network Conference offers an interdisciplinary venue for social and behavioural scientists, mathematicians, computer scientists, physicists, statisticians, and others to present their work in the area of social networks. The primary objective of the Conference is to facilitate interactions between the many different disciplines interested in network science. The Conference provides a unique opportunity for the dissemination and debate of recent advances in experimental, theoretical and applied network research.

***Important dates***
Abstract Submission Deadline: Monday 21st May Registration Deadline: Monday 4th June

***Conference website***
www.busman.qmul.ac.uk/networks

Mobilities, Space, and Inequality

Institute of Sociology, University of Basel 7 - 8. September 2007

Cosmobilities Network Conference 2007

Mobilities, Space, and Inequality

The social arrangements of space and social inequality have always formed intriguing associations, yet the dynamics introduced by modernization, globalization, migration, and social change in relation to space and inequality have not received sufficient attention in the social sciences.

Developments in communication and transport technologies are offering new possibilities of social arrangements and inequality structures in time and space. As a result, new spatial settings and functional overlappings are possible, e.g. working from home, travel time as working time, long distance relationships, etc. Accordingly, spatial mobility constitutes a number of different types of mobility. Of interest are not only the different types of mobility but also their relations to each other, as well as to social inequality structures and their dynamics more generally.

For Conference Program, Paper Abstracts & Registration Form link here

Cosmopolitan paradoxes

Cosmopolitan paradoxes:

Migration and emergent systems of transnational rights

Mediterranean Mobilities Network, CeMoRe

www.medmobilities.net

29 June 2007, 10:30-16:30

@ the Institute for Advanced Studies, Lancaster University

DISCUSSANTS

Professor John Solomos, Department of Sociology, City University

SPEAKERS

Professor Lydia Morris, Department of Sociology, University of Essex

‘Managing contradiction: Civic stratification and migrant rights in Europe’

Dr Liza Schuster, Department of Sociology, City University

‘The realities of the New Asylum paradigm’

Dr Eleni Hatzidimitriadou, European Centre for the Study of Migration and Social Care, University of Kent

‘Matters of agency and social transformation for migrant women from Mediterranean countries’

Dr Gabriella Lazaridis, Department of Sociology, University of Leicester

‘Social capital, agency and pathways to inclusion: The case of Albanian migrant women in Greece’

VENUE AND FEES

The workshop will be held in the Institute for Advanced Studies at Lancaster University on 29 June. The workshop will run from 10:30am to 16:30pm with a complimentary lunch at 12:30 pm. There are a limited number of places so please book soon to avoid disappointment.

The cost will be £30 (£10 for postgraduate student attendance) to include all meeting costs, a meal and tea/coffee. The workshop has been scheduled to allow participants to travel to, and from Lancaster on the same day. If required, overnight accommodation is available at cost on campus. Please contact Pennie Drinkall if you would like to attend at p.drinkall@lancaster.ac.uk

ORGANISERS: Rodanthi Tzanelli r.tzanelli@kent.ac.uk

Javier Caletrio j.caletrio@lancaster.ac.uk

Co-sponsored by the IAS – Institute for Advanced Studies (Incubation Programme) http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/ias/index.htm

and CeMoRe – Centre for Mobilities Research http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fss/sociology/cemore

Researching the Mediterranean in the North West of England

Invitation to a social event – Researching the Mediterranean in the North West of England. Following a good response to the idea of creating a network of young researchers studying the Mediterranean in the NW of England, we are glad to announce the first meeting on the 18th of April in Manchester.

Date: 18th of April 2007 - Time: 3pm

Venue: Room 0.2.29. School of Social Sciences, Manchester University.

Located in the second floor of the Dover Street (Old Wing) building. Please see this link for directions.

Conceived as informal social events, these meetings will provide the opportunity to talk about our own research with colleagues sharing similar concerns and to develop a trans- and post-disciplinary dialogue. While these meetings might be of obvious interest to researchers in International Relations and European and Middle East studies we want to encourage scholars whose object of research is in the Mediterranean but who might not have thought of themselves as doing ‘Mediterranean studies’. In this respect academics looking at issues as diverse as urban transport, culinary cultures, uneven regional development, coastal erosion, networks of cities or migration, might benefit from thinking about their object of study in the broader geographical, geopolitical, economic and cultural context of the Mediterranean and how different ‘Mediterranean’ policies, discourses and projects shape the processes under study.

In our first meeting we will be discussing forthcoming activities so please bring ideas about possible future projects. Thus far we have received expressions of interest from more than 20 people and attendance to the first meeting is expected to be good. Our colleague Dimitiris Papadimitriou has kindly booked the room for the event and will be our host in Manchester. After the meeting those wishing to stay longer will go for a drink in a bar nearby.


Hakim Darbouche (hakim.darbouche@liv.ac.uk)

Javier Caletrio (j.caletrio@lancaster.ac.uk)

Lancaster University's own Mobilities Research Day - 16 May 2007

Lancaster University Centre for Mobilities Research (CeMoRe) will be having an in-house research day on 16th May 2007.

As before, the aims of the day are to highlight on-going mobilities research at Lancaster, and to promote interchange and dialogue between Lancaster mobilities researchers. We expect to include contributors from all three faculties and would especially like to include papers from researchers who have not previously been closely involved with CeMoRe activities.

CeMoRe takes a deliberately broad view of mobilities research and embraces mobility in all its forms. Further information can be found at: http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fss/sociology/cemore/index.htm

We expect the day to consist mainly of short (c10 minute) reports on on-going research, new research ideas, or recently completed projects. Please bring this research day to the attention of colleagues and postgraduate students who may not currently be involved with CeMoRe activities.

You are, of course, also welcome to simply come to listen to papers and participate in discussion. Further details will be circulated in March when the programme is finalised. Participation in the Research Day will be free of charge!

Let’s talk about txt!

Let’s talk about txt! is a conference on texting and education at the University of Leeds:

Edutxt and Cy-nap are hosting a one day conference 27th March at Leeds University focussing on the uses of SMS in the Education sector in the UK. “The speakers are all desktop SMS text messaging users from the education community, and they will be sharing their experiences and showing examples of how mobile messaging has made a difference from recruitment through to student retention and achievement. Speakers include Andy Black - a well known authority on new technology for e-learning from BECTA and Ray Lawrence - howtomoodle UK.”

The conference is designed as a showcase for creative uses of SMS, and of course to promote the services of the conference organisers, but it seems it genuinely will offer an insight to those who have yet to adopt and develop a mobile strategy in education.

More information via the Cy-nap site, or here via this PDF.

Digital Communities 2007

The IGU Commission on the Geography of Information Society and Digital Communities announces its 2007 joint meeting in Tallinn, Estonia and Helsinki, Finland.

Digital Communities 2007 - Mobility/Mindset/Maturity: Call for Papers

After sixty years of electronic computing and a decade of commercialized Internet use, it is valuable to evaluate the influence of information technologies on our lives and to plan for an ICT enabled future. Among the emerging applications of ICT are its growing mobility and influence on our movements, and widespread adoption in many societies. The potential of ubiquitous information access and maturity of the basic technologies prompts consideration of our past experience and future preparedness.

While all topics associated with the spatial and social context of ICT are welcome, general topics of interest include:

* Mobility: The social, economic, and spatial implications of emerging information technologies that span the spectrum from enhanced mobile phones to ubiquitous computing, and shape our
ability to move and access information.
* Mindset: The way that individuals, organizations, and governments understand ICT and exploit and plan for future advances in information technologies. How do we conceptualize ICT; and do we need to change the way we perceive these technologies? What changes in mindset accompany the transition to ICT enabled intelligent development?
* Maturity: ICTs are no longer emerging technologies but, in many societies, well established elements for government, business, and social interaction. What does the maturity of ICT mean for development, policy and communities?

More details available online at www.digitalcommunities.info