academia – Page 3 – Sam Kinsley

11 May, 202011 May, 2020

Funded PhD: British Telegraphic work and spaces

A glitched image of a telegraph worker up a telegraph pole

My colleague Richard Noakes, Anne Archer and James Elder at BT Archives and I have a funded PhD position that will commence in September. Please see all of the relevant information below. Please also circulate widely and feel free to get in touch.

http://www.exeter.ac.uk/pg-research/money/award/?id=3894

The duration of this studentship is 45 months (or part time equivalent) plus additional 3 months for professional development opportunities

Closing Date for applications is Monday 1st June 2020.

Applications are invited for a PhD studentship on British telegraphic work and spaces, 1846-1950 at the University of Exeter in partnership with BT Archives (London). The studentship is awarded by the Science Museums and Archives Consortium under the AHRC’s Collaborative Doctoral Partnership scheme. The project will commence in September 2020 and will be supervised by Prof Richard Noakes and Dr Sam Kinsley at Exeter and Ms Anne Archer and Mr James Elder at BT Archives, with further support from the Science Museum.

This project is a revisionist study of the largely forgotten operators of Britain’s inland telegraph network from the foundation of the first private telegraph companies in 1846, through nationalisation of the service in 1870, to 1950 when the service was in sharp decline owing to competition from telephony. It plugs a considerable gap in the historiography of British telecommunications – the need for a systematic and detailed understanding of telegraphic work and the spaces within which it was pursued. The project will yield new insights into such key developments as the entry of women into telegraphy and the foundation of telegraphic workers’ unions. The project involves the study of a wealth of largely unexplored primary source material, the bulk of which is held in BT Archives. The systematic study of these materials will enable the CDA student to make a highly original contribution to historical scholarship and to help BT Archives in several important ways, including significantly enhancing the detail in its catalogue, producing website content and curating physical exhibitions. The CDA’s research will also help enhance the Science Museum’s catalogue of telegraphic instruments.

A preliminary survey of BT Archives catalogue reveals an immense amount of material that can support this research. It holds complete runs of periodicals dedicated to telegraphy and a wealth of unpublished documents relating to such issues as station organisation, employee recruitment, training, health and working conditions, and the experiences of female and male telegraphists. It is possible that the project will also uncover materials revealing the experiences of BAME and other under-represented telegraphists. The richness of the archival material that the student will be exploring means that there is much flexibility within the project for them to build on their own intellectual strengths and follow their own interests.

In addition to the 36 months spent on research, the CDA student will also spend a minimum of 3-6 months on professional development opportunities at BT Archives. How and when this time is used will depend on the student’s interests and goals and this will be agreed with them early in the project. The time will be used to develop the student’s professional archiving and cataloguing skills.

Further information about the funding scheme and the institutions involved in this project can be found at the following links:

AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Partnership Scheme
https://www.ahrc-cdp.org/

BT Archives
https://www.btplc.com/thegroup/btshistory/btgrouparchives/

Postgraduate Research at the University of Exeter
https://www.exeter.ac.uk/pg-research/

Science Museum Group Collaborative Doctoral Awards
https://www.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/our-work/research-public-history/collaborative-doctoral-awards/

UKRI research training
https:/www.ukri.org/skills/funding-for-research-training

For more information about the project and informal enquiries, please contact the primary supervisor, Professor Richard Noakes. r.j.noakes@exeter.ac.uk

UK/EU tuition fees and an annual maintenance allowance at current Research Council rate of £15,285 per year. Award holders will also receive a Collaborative Doctoral Partnership maintenance of £600 per year and a partial London weighting of £1000 per year. The partner institution, BT Archvies, will also provide the award holder with up to £1000 per year to support travel and other research expenses.

11 May, 202011 May, 2020

Climbing up the walls – 11th May

Literally millions of words have been exhausted in the ether about the current circumstances of life in the (Global North) world altered by Coronavirus Disease 2019. I hesitate to add any. What can be said? We express our collective and individual despair, hopes, rage and a myriad other responses, more-often-than-not, quickly. We look for ready answers. We look for analogies, metaphors and similies. We attempt to find certainty. Unfortunately, none is forthcoming.

“The search for the means to put an end to things, … is what enables the discourse to continue.”
The Unnamable – Samuel Beckett

Closeted, imperfectly, in a bedroom at a small desk, all of the attempts to concretise, to render things certain, as normatively positive or negative, wash past me on-screen. Mostly it is in the column of the phone screen as I frustratedly monitor a bigger screen and wait for student work to download, or feedback and marks to update. Not-so-quietly I may swear as systems stall, efforts are lost or in vain. The window is a constant distraction, as are the cries of laughter or tears from our children.

A vacilation between distraction and uncertainty seems to be the only rhythm to the time I spend working. I mark, I check the news. I mark, I check social media. I attend a ‘meeting’, my children shout. I reply to emails, the doorbell rings for yet another delivery. The negotiation of new norms of communication draws on pre-existing expectations but there are, as Nancy Baym has noted, moments of jarring difference when moving between contexts. We remain uncertain. For example: faces are (sometimes surprisingly) hidden or visible. I sometimes don’t know what is ‘polite’.

There are, of course, bigger uncertainties. Our governments appear not to agree on what is for the best. Universities do not know where the money will come from, if students will return, how that could happen safely, or when any of this might be possible. The rhetoric of the UK Prime Minister’s speech to the nation on Sunday 10th May was imbued with this conditional uncertainty. There was a striking repetition of the word “if“. It was perhaps an attempt to borrow the formal logic exemplified in the controlled uncertainty of the conditional statements we see in programming languages “if — then — (else —)”. Nevertheless, I confess, I remain uncertain even about that.

Holding several competing, perhaps mutually exclusive, possible eventualities at once in our minds appears to be what is asked of us. If the rate of transmission drops below the desired threshold and if we can track and trace infections then some things are said to be possible — more shops might open, children might return to schools. Some semblance of certainty to the risk is attempted through a ‘COVID Alert Level’ of 1-5. Lending the certainty of an integer value to a largely unseen risk. The visualisation of that level employs colour, attempting to convey threat through the perceptual cues of the colour spectrum – just as Brian Massumi diagnosed in relation to the even more abstract Terror Alert System of the Bush Administration.

It is all too easy to slip into another form of certainty, though – the certainty of critique. The temptation is to point the finger, to judge. To highlight the failings or mis-steps of a government, institution, or official is relatively easy. To say what is ‘wrong’ is relatively easy. The challenge for us all, whether we remain in work at a care home, hospital or supermarket, whether we are in our makeshift home offices, or whether we are in government, is to collectively find what is ‘right’. I do not flatter myself to think that I can help guide national policy, that is for others far more capable. Nevertheless, we all need both in conversations ‘at work’, in our homes and with those we rely upon or who rely upon us to negotiate what is ‘right’ in how we behave now. How much should parents and teachers expect of our children, or ourselves, when ‘home schooling’? How much should employers and colleagues expect of us as we navigate different WFH contexts? These negotiations appear to be really demanding, exhausting even.

A further conditional uncertainty: If we can negotiate our differing expectations, if we can find a way through the ongoing difficulties of ‘social distancing’, if the measures work to restrain ‘the virus’, then… what? Like many people I find it hard to imagine ‘what next’. Can we ‘return to normal’? What does that mean? Is life on campus now irrevocably changed? Should we expect the ‘online pivot’ to be a part of the ‘new normal’? I suspect that, for all the speculation and argument offered out there, what eventually comes about will be more ramshackle and less catastrophic than some might expect. This ongoing uncertainty, even as we (hopefully) pass the milestones to leave ‘lockdown’, seems like a challenge that will remain a part of working life for some time to come.

Like it or loathe it, this is perhaps the condition of life represented by ‘the anthropocene‘ – the abstract, multifaceted threat of profound if partially unknowable but wholly undesirable change. The experience of the, perhaps naïve – often privileged, pontificators like myself may simply bring us to realisation that nobody is immune from complex and uncertain changes. This is what is meant by that near-catchphrase of ‘an interconnected world’, this is what that can feel like.

There are no easy answers. That is my only realisation from this. Not profound but fairly solid, in the face of stultifying uncertainty. We can vomit words onto our digital platforms, as I am doing here, but they are unlikely to provide more than momentary solace. As a sufferer from anxiety for all of my adult life the feelings brought about are familiar if unwelcome. So I focus on one aim: help others and myself to avoid climbing the walls.

Climbing up the walls – Radiohead

27 February, 202027 February, 2020

More than their share. 27th February.

A glitched image of Oxbridge dons processing

As a member of the UCU I have been on strike a frightening amount this year. During the strike action, a colleague sent a tweet pointing out that much of the dispute we have with the employers’ organisations around fair and equal pay and precarity is figured in terms of ‘management’ being in dispute with ‘management’ but that many senior academics are involved in the recruitment of early career staff, from who’s precarious labour they then benefit.

To elaborate: the rhetoric of the dispute could be understood as figuring ‘management’ as a ‘them’ and the unified mass of ‘workers’ as ‘us’. However, I am inclined to agree with my colleague that things are rarely that simple.

Responsibility for early career academics’ precarious contracts and the often-unfair nature of remuneration for anyone in a university that is not white and male is shared.

Responsibility is shared by those of us that bring in grant income and attach PhD studentships or research assistant positions to them.

Responsibility is shared by those of us that request post-graduate teaching assistance.

Responsibility is shared by those of us that benefit from any kind of teaching ‘buy out’ or relief that comes from temporarily employed staff.

No doubt (given my far-from-comprehensive experience), I have failed to identify other ways in which that responsibility might be shared.

Responsibility is shared then, but the ability to effect change in relation to that responsibility is a little less clear. The forms of ethical reasoning we might variously make in relation to how our responsibility works are difficult.

I want to work through a couple of the cases I identify above. The responsibility for the precarious working conditions and (potentially) unfair remuneration and/or workload of an early career researcher (ECR) is shared by the principle investigator (PI), the employing institution (departmental management, HR and others) and the funder.

If a senior academic wants to do some research the cost of buying themselves out is very high, the cost of employing a junior colleague is less. The PI wants the research to be done, they may feel it would also be valuable experience for an ECR. A series of compromises ensue, hence the difficult ethical reasoning.

A prospective PI pulls together an application. They identify the work they want to do. Then, they look at the funder’s requirements and try to translate the ideal into the ‘fundable’. The funder might: only fund for a particular length of time; only cover some of the costs (e.g. pay = yes, expenses = no); have specific requirements about expertise; and other things I cannot think of.

So, the PI compromises. They want to do the research, but due to budget constraints and funder requirements they can only employ a research assistant part-time. They submit the grant with a part-time post because may believe an ECR will also compromise for ‘experience’, that there’s other valuable things they’ll get as a result, or because they hope to ‘top up’ the post with other funding.

Who bears responsibility? The PI seems to be making the active decisions here. Nevertheless, they are compromising because they face constraints. The funder will not pay enough, or for long enough, perhaps. The institution has increased its ‘overheads’ which increases the cost of employing someone. For a specific grant application, the PI has to decide how to negotiate their constraints to arrive at a ‘fundable’ project that (in the terms of this discussion) is also ‘fair’.

For research conducted in a particular university, the institution has to decide what research is ‘worth’ – do they want to invest in researchers, to develop the careers of all of those involved in any given project? Do they want to make the opportunity to do research open and equal? Do they want to support the administration and management of research-related people and resources? And as a result they will compromise. Sadly, the compromises that have been taken have become increasingly torturous. A PI is responsible for more and more complex administrative work, which may once have been done for them.

For a research funder, like the UK research councils, the political weather dictates the money available and the priorities. That politics can be unsavoury. Do they fund everything equally? Or focus resources on perceived priorities? Do they fund comprehensively or exclude some costs?

In the UK, the pot of money for research has diminished significantly in recent years. That pot is also largely prioritised. If an academic does research in a priority area they are, perhaps, lucky. Those that don’t work in such areas get weaker and weaker gruel.

In the social sciences in the UK there is a growing pool of applicants, more grant applications being submitted and the success rate has plateaued somewhere around 13% for the ESRC. So, all things being equal (which they’re decidedly not), you need to submit over seven applications to see one succeed.

I have seen estimates that a grant often takes up a month’s worth of work time to prepare (if the PI spent 100% of their time on the application for a month), so seven applications would be a huge investment of time and the resources and salary to which that equates.

Why bother? Well, the PI wants to do the research for a number of reasons. It is why we get into academia – (in overly-simplistic terms) to find things out. Many of us want to contribute to our understanding of the world around us, to contribute to the debates we find stimulating. Careers are also, sadly, pegged against grant income success. When I began my first ‘permanent’ position as a lecturer I had an income target set. Fortunately, it was not enforced and later was removed.

As you become more experienced and/or successful as a PI, it seems to me, you solidify a reputation and grant success breeds further successes. Research funders like to back ‘safe’ bets. We have arrived not at a meritocratic system of peer-reviewed excellence but at a recapitulation of a feudal system of ‘science’ (taken in its broadest sense) that would be familiar to 18^th and 19^th century academics. Careers are often contingent upon the decisions of powerful (whether they like it/recognise it or not) professors with grant success. Being written into a grant as a named researcher or co-investigator makes a career. Being alienated or ignored can break one.

Sadly, I do not have an upbeat conclusion here. None of this is sustainable. Especially when government steadily withdraws support and imposes metrics that encourage institutional behaviour that damages ordinary staff. We are already in a feudal system that exacerbates the worst kinds of workplace behaviour. This is a systematic issue more than anything. Individual (successful) professors can choose to exercise their power (such as it is) benevolently but (it seems to me) they cannot alter the system.

Faced with these issues it is incumbent upon all of us inside the system to find a way through – I suggest this involves collaborating a lot more, it involves acting in solidarity and with compassion. This may prove difficult for those of us who found our way into academia because it permits the ‘lone wolf’ worker autonomy rarely found anywhere else. Working cultures need to be rethought, collectively, with care.

Take care of yourselves and those around you, regardless of how it appears – we are in this mess together. If you are up the ladder, do not pull the ladder up – pull others up after you.

More than their share – Dolly Parton

31 January, 202031 January, 2020

Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space Spring Academy – PGR/ECR opportunity

The IRS Spring Academies are a fantastic opportunity for anyone with an interest in the theme and in an early career position (postgraduate or post-doctoral researchers).

Investigating Space(s): Current Theoretical and Methodological Approaches: Part 4 – Spaces of Crisis

26 – 29 May 2020
Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space (IRS) in Erkner, near Berlin

leibniz-irs.de/springacademy2020

The IRS Spring Academy is a yearly format similar to a PhD summer school but, as the name suggests, taking place in spring. It is an international and interdisciplinary format that provides spots for 25 participants, typically doctoral students but also post-doctoral researchers in the early phase of their careers. The overarching aim of the IRS Spring Academy is to support qualification projects which seek to explore the spatial dimension of societally relevant topics. In particular we seek to stimulate debates at the intersections of disciplines and seek to promote academics who wish to conduct research with a spatial perspective. The IRS Spring Academy is dedicated to stimulate conceptual debates around a spatial perspective and to support new methodological knowledge that is required to conduct the related empirical investigations. Moreover, the IRS Spring Academy is a brokerage event that supports participants to build up personal networks and it provides feedback from acknowledged seniors for researchers at the early stage of their careers.

Each IRS Spring Academy will take four intensive days of collaboration, discussion and exchange. The program combines different elements and thereby offers plenty of opportunities to debate conceptual issues and methodological challenges as well as to engage in a critical, yet constructive and supportive dialogue.

This year’s fourth IRS Spring Academy titled “Investigating Space(s): Current Theoretical and Methodological Approaches: Part 4 – Spaces of Crisis” is supported by the Leibniz Research Alliance “Crises in a Globalised World”.

The German Red Crosswill act as a local cooperation partner in 2020.

Part 4 on “Spaces of Crisis”

There is little doubt. We live in times of crisis. Core functions of democratic societies, like the financial system, democratic institutions, the free press or human-nature relationships are under severe pressure. Global problems, like increasing social inequality and mass migration tend to escalate while those political institutions that have been built up to deal with international emergencies, like the UN and WTO, experience a loss of legitimacy and funding. As a consequence, more and more political and economic decisions are made under conditions of high uncertainty and great pressure. In other words, they are made in crisis.

In the social sciences, crisis has not yet been used as a properly defined scientific term. Rather, most typically it is used as a signifier of relevance in cases, in which “problem” is no longer sufficient to express the severity of the perceived deficiency or the felt urgency to act. In crisis management, a rather recent and strongly practice-oriented knowledge domain, crisis is defined as followings: It denotes escalating threatening situations, in which actors feel an increased pressure to act under conditions of fundamental uncertainty. Crises erupt surprisingly and once the dynamics are in place, they unfold in an unpredictable manner. Crisis is a highly ambivalent notion. It marks a turning point for better or worse.

The term crisis is full of temporal implications. It suggests a certain dramaturgy of abruptness, urgency and surprise. In hindsight, the course of events is often arranged around the acute crisis. Crisis mangers differentiate between pre-crisis (or: the ‘primordial phase’), the acute crisis and the post-crisis. The first phase is about preparation for crisis but most often also about ignored warning signals. The acute phase is about crisis management and techniques to regain control. The latter phase is about reflecting the course of events and learning from crisis. Up until recently, the spatial dimension of crisis, however, has been neglected, despite the fact that in an era of increasing global inter-dependencies, crises have become more “trans-boundary”.

Against this background, the 4th IRS Spring Academy has the following aims:

To come to a theoretically ambitious understanding of crisis, highlighting in particular…

• the enhanced relevance of uncertainty and non-knowledge,

• the mechanisms behind the dynamics of crisis,

• the relationship between crisis and normal,

• the particularities of decisions made under conditions of crisis,

• the transformative potentials of crisis and

• the often implicit assumptions that underlie the idea of crisis.

To explore the temporal and spatial dimensions of crisis and their connections. Of particular interest are

tipping points, in which crises emerge or calm down,
ways of thinking about the future in situations that lack orientation,
the transgression of territorial borders and the embeddedness in multi-level systems and
how crises affect and connect different places.

To collect empirical knowledge about crises in different sectors and domains in order to

explore the possibilities to compare crises and to
discover additional aspects of crisis.

Discuss methodological challenges and strategies. Of particular relevance are

ethical concerns of doing research with threatened actors and organizations,
access to highly confidential information and
the challenges of dealing with multiple perspectives and with ex-post accounts.

Program

The overarching goal of the IRS Spring Academy is to enable junior researchers from the social sciences to identify relevant research gaps, to encourage them to use a spatial perspective in their analyses and to learn from leading experts in the field about theoretical approaches and innovative methods for empirical work. Participants will have the opportunity to present their projects in paper pitch formats and to access leading experts for one-on-one consultancies. We therefore cordially invite doctoral and early postdoctoral researchers in the social sciences, geography and history to join us for an interesting program to discuss their own research with internationally leading scholars and their peers.

The IRS Spring Academy combines well-tried and proven formats such as lectures and seminars with less common formats such as doing-research workshops, paper pitches, or academic speed networking. It offers various possibilities to exchange ideas, to discuss current concepts and methodological approaches, as well as to getting feedback on one’s own research projects from leading scholars in the field.

:: download Call for Applications – the call closes on 28 February 2020

Participation

In order to foster in-depth discussions and reflection as well as extensive opportunities for establishing and consolidating networks, both among each other and with leading international scholars, a maximum of 25 participants will be admitted to the IRS Spring Academy.

Thanks to funding by the Leibniz Research Alliance “Crises in a Globalised World” we do not charge any tuition fees. Meals, snacks and drinks during the event are included, as well as one evening reception and one dinner.

Participants are required to organize accommodation and make travel arrangements themselves and to cover these expenses.

For applicants who a) cannot receive any funding from home institutions and b) travel and accommodation costs would prevent participation, may receive a scholarship. 3.500 Euro are reserved for participants in need. These scholarships will be divided between selected candidates and shall contribute to compensate for travel and accommodation costs.

If you wish to apply for a scholarship, please briefly explain your situation and indicate the amount that would make your participation possible.

Keynote Speakers

Prof. Dr. Dennis Dijkzeul | Ruhr-Universität Bochum

Prof. Dr. Jörg Sydow | Freie Universität, Berlin

Lecturers

Prof. Dr. Olivier Berthod | Jacobs University Bremen
Dr. Natascha Bing | German Red Cross
Jun.-Prof. Dr. Verena Brinks | Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz
Dr. Sarah Marie Hall | University of Manchester
Prof. Dr. Oliver Ibert | Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space
Dr. Thorsten Klose-Zuber | German Red Cross

Organizer
Oliver Ibert

Locations
Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Spacer (IRS), Flakenstraße 29-31, 15537 Erkner
Deutsches Rotes Kreuz e. V., DRK-Generalsekretariat, Carstennstraße 58, 12205 Berlin

31 January, 202031 January, 2020

AI Now’s Data Genesis programme – job opportunity

Facial tracking system, showing gaze direction, emotion scores and demographic profiling

The excellent AI Now institute have announced a fantastic new project titled ‘Data Genesis’ – I’ve copied some details below. Importantly – there are jobs, so – if you think you might fit the bill then apply!

AI Now Institute has been developing new approaches to study and understand the role of training data in the machine learning field. Key research questions include: What type of information is used as training data? Who generates and collects it and for what purpose? What segments of society does it reflect? Who and what does it exclude? And how does that affect the functioning of AI systems themselves?

The Data Genesis program’s goal is to answer and demystify these questions through three core components:

Archiving and analyzing the origin and construction of key datasets that serves as foundations for today’s AI systems;
Producing visualizations, maps, and other designs to help crystallize and contextualize what this data is and what it means to communities, practitioners, companies, and policymakers; and
Convening experts from across disciplines to help build a field around this topic.

The rapid proliferation of AI into various social and political contexts demands a thorough understanding of the data that these systems are trained on, including the biases and flaws this data may encode. Our Data Genesis program will investigate the complex foundation on which AI is built and will call into question the perception of AI as a magical force that is superior to human judgement.

Check out the jobs associated with the project here.

23 January, 202023 January, 2020

Absence makes… blogging harder

I haven’t written here for some time. It is not because I am short of ideas, but rather – I am short of time. I am convening three modules this year at work and had to write one (from scratch) and modify two. Coupled with the strike action, becoming a new ‘Co-Editor-in-Chief‘ and various things going on outside of work – I have been stretched!

I really do want to return to posting here though. I am unsure how often and in what way… I hope to return to the ‘work notes‘ in particular, I find these quite helpful, personally. So, I hope people are still reading things that get posted here, I also hope that, if you like things I have written in the past, you might like to get in touch and talk about them – I would welcome it 🙂

As Adam Greenfield used to regularly say in his own blogposts: be kind to yourselves and those around you.

17 September, 2019

Changes. 16th September

“Now it is the autumn again; the people are all coming back. The recess of summer is over, when holidays are taken, newspapers shrink, history itself seems momentarily to falter and stop. But the papers are thickening and filling again; things seem to be happening; … Everywhere there are new developments, new indignities; the intelligent people survey the autumn world, and liberal and radical hackles rise, and fresh faces are about, and the sun shines fitfully, and the telephones ring.”
The History Man – Malcolm Bradbury

Just over a year ago I began ‘work notes‘ as a means of reflecting on the rhythm of academic life. The indignities of my year meant that it did not last – exhaustion got the better of me. I hope to resume work notes with some periodic reflections on what ‘work’ might mean for ‘knowledge workers’ like us in academia. As I said last year:

Some perform their indignities, some have them thrust upon them. While many labour under increasing pressures and are forced into indignities, there remains a, privileged, few in the loftier perches of the ivory tower that seem to habitually perform indignation from positions of relative comfort. Just as Bradbury observed through the acerbic whit of his “campus” novels.

Perhaps I have over-egged my performance of indignities. I am perhaps closer to those in the loftier perches now. We are, all of us, working through our issues. Time may change me but I can’t trace time. I confess, as this medium almost dictates, that mine overwhelmed me this summer. However, I was helped and for that I am truly grateful.

A new academic year sometimes feels like a new start. Capturing some of that energy, and the energy of the new and returning students can, sometimes, be helpful. Nevertheless, it can also feel somewhat like Groundhog Day. Except, of course, the students remain young and I get older. I watch the ripples change their size
but never leave the stream… still the days seem the same.

The rhythm begins to shift. Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes. Self-determined schedules give way to institutional timetables – even in advance of official term-time. For me, the big shin-dig of (UK) geographyland, the RGS-IBG conference, marks the end of summer. My attention turns (even more) to teaching.

Like many colleagues, I must surpress a sigh as non-academic friends persist in the misconception that I have had three months off and must be marvellously rested. In the cooling air and faintly lengthening shadows, term awaits with new beginnings for staff and students alike. Turn and face the strange.

Changes – David Bowie.

20 August, 201920 August, 2019

CFP> Disrupting technology: contextualising continuity and change in technology

Via Kate Hardy

Disrupting technology: contextualising continuity and change in technology, work and employment

16-17th January, Centre for Employment Relations Innovation and Change, University of Leeds

Recent scholarship on the relationship between technology and work has often tended to accentuate new technologies’ supposed transformative effects. Conferences on work and employment often feature streams dedicated solely to new technologies – such as platforms or AI – segregated from other streams where technology is mentioned very little. This both narrows our understandings of what constitutes ‘technology’ and contributes to the renewed growth of technological determinism, both in its utopian or dystopian variants- from Fully Automated Luxury Communism” on one hand to a nightmare of total surveillance on the other. Such debates are often speculative and can serve to obscure how actually existing employment relations are being shaped by new technologies.

The Centre for Employment Relations, Innovation and Change (CERIC) at Leeds University Business School is pleased to announce a call for papers for a two day event in January 2020 relating to these questions.

This workshop calls for more careful, empirically grounded, theorisations of technology, its novelty and its impact on work and employment relations. We ask that contributions recognise the influence of conflicted interests and actions by managers, workers, the state and other social actors on the patterns, processes and outcomes of technological innovation. By devoting more attention to contextualising and historicising the relationship between technology and work, we ask contributors to develop more critical accounts of the extent of transformation and disruption, vis-à-vis entrenchment or continuity of existing social relations and employment relationships. Beyond the technology itself, what is genuinely novel and transformative about automation, AI or ‘platformisation’, which more mundane technologies might we be missing from the analysis?

We welcome contributions of themes including:

The state, regulation and new technology
Historical research on the introduction of new technologies of work
Management, resistance, organization, and technology
Occupations, skills, professions, and technology
Inequalities (race, gender, (dis)ability) and technology
Methods for studying work and technology – towards a research agenda

Submission details

Registration will be £100 for full academic staff and £50 for PhD students, with an optional £25 for the conference meal.
Please submit abstracts to c(dot)r(dot)umney(at)leeds(dot)ac(dot)uk or i(dot)bessa(at)leeds(dot)ac(dot)uk with a deadline of 10th October. Registration links will be available from October.

20 August, 201920 August, 2019

Antipod: A Radical Geography Podcast and Sound Collective – 1st episode online

Perhaps worth checking out…

Episode 1: Clyde Woods, Dispossession, and Resistance in New Orleans

In this first full episode of Antipod we turn our attention to Black Geographies, the theme of our first season. Hosts Brian Williams and Akira Drake Rodriguez walk listeners through a series of clips from a panel on Clyde Woods’s posthomously published work Development Drowned and Reborn: The Blues and Bourbon Restorations of Post-Katrina New Orleans, edited by Jordan T. Camp and Laura Pulido (University of Georgia Press, 2017). Brian and Akira comment on the use of Woods’s “blues epistemology” framework to contextualize the ongoing making and re-making of Black geographies in New Orleans. Covering themes from dispossession to displacement to the fallacy of “natural” disasters, this episode challenges traditional notions of urban planning and privileges what Woods’s calls “the visions of the dispossessed.” Clips from this episode are from an “Author Meets Critics” panel at the Community Book Center in New Orleans’s Seventh Ward, a space of continuity for pre- and post-Katrina New Orleans residents. The participants in the discussion were: former Woods student and activist-poet Sunni Patterson; Khalil Shahyd, Senior Policy Advocate at the National Resource Defense Council; Anna Brand, Asst. Prof at the University of California at Berkeley; Shana Griffin from Jane’s Place, New Orleans’ first community land trust; Sue Mobley, who, at the time of the panel, was the Public Programs Manager for the Albert and Tina Small Center for Collaborative Design at Tulane University; and Jordan T. Camp (editor) who at the time of the panel was at Barnard College, and is now the Director of Research at the People’s Forum in New York.

4 July, 20194 July, 2019

Call for participation: (Infrequent) Bristol reading group

A painting of a boy reading, by Eastman Johnson

I’ve not blogged in some time and hope to get back to it now term is over (we’ll see..!) I’ve been reflecting on ‘getting things done’ a bit. I am not especially good at reading on my own. I used to participate in a reading group as a PhD student and found it rewarding. As things somewhat slow down over summer, I was wondering if anyone in the Bristol area would like to meet up a couple/few times in the next couple of months with the aim of discussing things we have read?

I have some possible suggestions for things to read but would be happy to receive others. Please get in touch if you’re interested.