Sent on behalf of Jeff Malpas [[log in to unmask]]
The Place Research Network is now live and accessible at www.placenetwork.info
The Place Research Network is a website, built around social networking software adapted to academic needs, that aims to support, enable and encourage interdisciplinary discussion, engagement and networking around the idea of place (as well as associated concepts of space, time, and much more). Then fact that place is such a central and ubiquitous concept across so many disciplines is the main rationale for the Network - plus my own conviction that place is perhaps the key term for interdisciplinary research in the arts, humanities and social sciences in the twenty-first century.
The Network aims to overcome the difficulty, when working with such a widespread concept, in communicating across diverse disciplines and interests, and to enable new collaborations as well as opening communication between ideas and researchers otherwise separated from one another (and not just geographically). There is no irony in the fact that the Network deploys a technology that may be thought to overcome place in its efforts to further the focus on place. If place is as fundamental as I think it is, then the Place Research Network will only work through opening up new places and new possibilities even as these arise through new technologies.
In this respect, it is essential for the success of the Network that we get widespread participation across what might be thought as the 'place research community', so please pass on the details about this site to as many as you can. Whether the Network is successful will depend on whether we can generate content (which has to come from users) and encourage participation.
*********************************************************************************
Jeff Malpas, Professor of Philosophy and Professorial Research Fellow
School of Philosophy, University of Tasmania
Private Bag 41, Hobart TAS 7001, AUSTRALIA
Ph +61 (0)3 6226 2257 - Fax +61 (0)3 6226 7847
***********************************************************************************
|