PRG Annual Conference - CFP: (extended 25 March 2019) Beyond Fluid Identities? New Sensitivities in the 21st Century

PGR Conference
CFP Deadline: (extended) 25 March 2019
Event: Thursday 20 June 2019

Department of Sociology, University of York

Keynote Speaker: Dr Steph Lawler, University of York
REGISTRATION NOW OPEN

‘Identity’ exists as a key question not only in academic research, but also in our social and personal lives. Who we are and how we came to be continues to be challenged and interrogated on individual and global scales. The importance of research in this field endures not only as a site of academic intrigue, but as political, social and personal phenomena.

We welcome abstracts from postgraduate researchers across the social sciences for 15 minute talks which address the conference theme of fluid identities, and how this manifests in light of new sensitivities in the 21st century. This includes, but is not limited to:

• The construction of the self in the contemporary world
• New tensions in the construction of identities
• The sensitive world and identity
• Identity and power in national crisis
• Going beyond Identity Politics
• Gender and sexuality; LGBTQ identities, feminisms and masculinities
• Social class, poverty and inequality
• Race, ethnicity and identity
• Belonging and migration; global and local identities
• Representations of identity; media, discourse and culture

Please submit abstracts of no more than 250 words to bfi-conference@york.ac.uk no later than 25 March 2019. Please also include your name, institution and your stage of study. Applicants will be informed of our decision in April 2019.

Further information on registration and attendance will be released in March 2019. There will be a nominal charge of £5.

Any questions can be sent to: bfi-conference@york.ac.uk

Imagining the History of the Future: Unsettling Scientific Stories (3 Days) Registration Open

Tuesday 27-29 March 2018, 9.00 am - 5:00 pm

Speakers:Professor Sherryl Vint (University of California, Riverside, USA)
Professor Charlotte Sleigh (University of Kent, UK)

The future just isn’t what it used to be… not least because people keep changing it. Recent years have seen a significant growth of academic and public interest in the role of the sciences in creating and sustaining both imagined and enacted futures. Technological innovations and emergent theoretical paradigms gel and jolt against abiding ecological, social, medical or economic concerns: researchers, novelists, cartoonists, civil servants, business leaders and politicians assess and estimate the costs of planning for or mitigating likely consequences. The trouble is that thinking about the future is a matter of perspective: where you decide to stand constrains what you can see.

With confirmed plenary speakers Professor Sherryl Vint (University of California, Riverside, USA) and Professor Charlotte Sleigh (University of Kent, UK) this three-day conference will bring together scholars, practitioners, and activists to explore ways in which different visions of the future and its history can be brought into productive dialogue.

Focused on the long technological 20th Century (roughly, 1887-2007) and looking particularly at the intersections between fictional/narrative constructions of the future, expert knowledge, and institutional policy development, the themes of the conference will include but are not limited to:

• The relationship between lay and expert futures, especially futures produced by communities marginalised in public dialogue by ethnicity, gender, sexuality, species or political orientation
• How have different forms of fiction (novels, films, games, comics) created different visions of what’s to come? How have their audiences responded to and shaped them?
• The role of counterfactuals/alternate histories, as well as factional accounts and popular science: how have different forms of writing positioned the future?
• What’s the relationship between past and present scenario planning in government or commerce? How have they fed into wider cultural conceptions of impending developments?
• Disciplinary influences: how have different academic disciplines – sciences, humanities, arts, social sciences – fed into developing futures? Has this changed over time?
• The role of futures past: how can we recover them, and what do they tell us about futures present? What are the forgotten or marginalised sites of future-making
• How have different themes – time, the apocalypse, the individual, among others – changed over the last century of future-thinking?

Website: http://unsettlingscientificstories.co.uk/imagined-futuresTwitter: @UnSetSciStories #ImaginedFutures

Registration: http://store.york.ac.uk/product-catalogue/sociology/imagining-the-history-of-the-future-unsettling-scientific-stories

Location: Ron Cooke Hub, University of York
Registration: NOW OPEN
Email: unsettling-science@york.ac.uk