Dear members,

We are receiving abstract proposals for the graduate conference "New Technologies, Old Methods: Social Sciences and Digital Worlds" taking place on 23rd September at the Department of Sociology of the University of Leicester. Please, send your abstracts by June 30th. We will really appreciate if you could disseminate it to your contacts. 

Best wishes,

María

"New Technologies, Old Methods: Social Sciences and Digital Worlds"

University of Leicester Sociology Graduate Conference

(Wednesday 23rd September, 2015)

 

Digital technologies have transformed the ways in which we interact, participate in policy making, influence social change, and how we perceive and present ourselves to others. Social media, mobile apps, online forums challenge key sociological concepts like the subject, identity, intimacy, authorship and temporality. Subjects -now users- produce data with daily routines through status updates, photo uploads, online payments, browsing history or the use of mobile apps for recreational or sport purposes. This data is stored and made accessible to different agents such as governments, corporations, NGOS or media. This raises ethical issues related to surveillance, data protection, copyrights and privacy. Researchers now face challenges of data access and analysis as well as the absence of validated methods, ethics codes and tools for inquiry into these questions. Moreover, their role as data producers in this new social environment have been displaced by business needs and technological innovations that make data collection and processing possible.

 

The enthusiasm and interest these technologies have generated in social sciences might render invisible other social processes equally urgent and worthy of study, for instance, arising social inequality, persistence of risk society or the role of vulnerable subjects in transnational capitalism. And although the offline activity has a long history of being researched in the social sciences with the use of valid and reliable methods, the appearance of online sphere has created new implications for carrying studies into both spheres. The conference will deal with the challenges, risks and new possibilities that the digital turn brings about for methodologies in social sciences.

 

We invite Masters and PhD students to apply with a 300-word abstract and a brief biographical note. Suggestions for presentations topics include, but are not limited to:

 

--Self-identity and perceptions of risk

--Digital technologies, embodiment and self-monitoring

--Problem of now-casting

--Digital methodologies

--Investigating social class, gender, and sexuality in the modern age

--New face of the civil society in the context of virtual world

--Big Data collection and analysis in Social Sciences

--Online surveillance and data protection

--Open and collaborative knowledge and copyrights

 

 

Please, send your abstract proposal (300 words) and a short biography indicating name, institutional affiliation and title in a word document no later than Monday June 30th to the email address: [log in to unmask]

 

                                                     

--