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Networked Urban Mobilities Conference and Mobile Art Exhibition 2014

Registration is now open! Please follow this link to register

 Keynotespeakers for the conference will be:

John Urry Professor of Sociology & director of CeMoRe, Lancaster University

Mimi Sheller Professor of Sociology & director at MCenter Drexel University

Vincent Kaufmann Professor & director of LaSUR Polytechical University of Lausanne

Stephen Graham Professor of Cities and Society, Newcastle University

Cosmobilities20Conference202014

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Networked Urban Mobilities 

How new technologies change cities, cultures and economies

5-7th of November 2014 
Venue: Aalborg University Campus in Copenhagen, DK
Joint hosts: Aalborg University & Roskilde University
 

To make cities places of lived social, economic and ecological sustainability, it needs strong and socially inclusive mobility systems. To celebrate its 10th anniversary the Cosmobilities Network invites scholars from social sciences and other mobility relevant disciplines to investigate and assess the impacts of networked urban mobilities on the urban condition.

Cities and regions are constituted by complex settings of social, technological, geographical, cultural, and digital networks of mobility (Graham, Marvin 2009). The urban scale is an essential part of the global ‘network society’ (Castells 1996) with new forms of social and cultural life emerging and with strong impacts on the ecological conditions. The great crash from 2007-8 onwards, means that future mobilities are going to be developing in a resource-constrained world. Excessively consuming infrastructural developments are highly risky for the future of modern societies. Thus, innovation in policies, products, services, and technologies is needed to tackle climate change and increasing urban social and economic challenges. An approach is required which bridges research disciplines and analyses societal consequences of path dependencies, funding decisions and technology policies.

When mobility is made plural and becomes mobilities it stems from the newly emerging field of interdisciplinary Mobilities research (Urry, Sheller 2006; Canzler, Kaufmann, Kesselring 2008; Grieco, Urry 2012). The concept of ‘mobilities’ (Urry 2000) encompasses the large-scale movements of people, goods, capital, and information, as well as the more local processes of daily transportation, communication and the travel of artefacts. These different mobilities are considered fundamental in framing modern social life and urban cultures in particular. All this demands better theory and empirical research to examine the interdependencies between changes in physical movement, electronic communication and their increasing convergence and potential substitution of travel and transport.

Against this background, the international Cosmobilities Network invites researchers and scholars to celebrate its anniversary and discuss their work on the social, economic, and ecological risks and opportunities of these emerging developments. The conference addresses these challenges and calls for the exchange of ideas on how to significantly improve the conditions for life in urban spaces.

 

We invite papers contributing to the following themes in relation to Networked Urban Mobilities:

Technologies: ‘Seamless mobility’ is a historically grown vision held by architects, planners, and engineers. Optimizing city spaces for the mobility of people, vehicles, goods and so on, with minimum loss of time and energy, has mobilized innovation, capital and entrepreneurial capacities.

Practices: Networked urban mobility infrastructures enable and limit everyday mobile practices of people at the same time. Based upon advanced mobile devices, people can manage complex arrangements of socio-spatial organization, scheduling, and negotiations.

Companies: For the sustainability of urban mobilities modification within companies are a key issue. The rise of the Internet and the spread of mobile computers and mobile phones, as well as recent developments such as Cloud computing have been mobilizing businesses in a way not imaginable only some years ago.

Governance & Planning: The need for sustainable mobilities in urban environments pressures urban politics. ‘Reflexive governance’ and the capacity to allocate expertise and knowledge at the right place and to the right time, is prerequisite for developing non-destructive future-oriented strategies for low carbon and socially inclusive mobilities.

Ethics/responsibilities: Considerations and systematic analysis of the ethical implication of mobility solutions is a research deficit. I.e. overcoming automobility and car-dependency in the Western societies without offering alternative ways of transport in rural areas. Or the use of ICT’s both in mobility research in form of mobile methods and in the application of mobility solutions such as Intelligent Transport Systems highlights problems of surveillance and privacy.

Arts: Art is yet another point of departure for the Cosmobilities Network towards a transdisciplinary perspective in Mobilities research. We explicitly call for artistic contributions on mobility from fine arts, music, film, writing, performance arts etc.

Mobile Arts Exhibitions: During the conference collaborative research will be generated in the form of on site exhibitions exploring themes of mobilities, cities, cultures, economies and ecologies. The exhibitions will inform and be informed by the discussions at the conference and establishing productive relationships between objects, media, places, landscapes, technologies and atmospheres

 

The open call has closed, but we now invite abstracts for the following thematic sessions:

Cycling Futures

Mobility in the arts

New Corporate Mobility Regimes

Planning Mobilities

Energy Transition and E-mobility: a Chance for Convergence?

Doing Ethnography in Hyper Mobile Fields: Methodological Challanges

Embodied Mobility Practices and Everyday Life

Urbanization in “non-urban” Space: the role of Mobilities in new Urban Epistemologies

Art as Mobile Research: The Journey of Making

Abstracts of no more than 300 words should be submitted  to Malene Freudendal-Pedersen (Roskilde University), malenef@ruc.dk or Sven Kesselring (Aalborg University), sven@plan.aau.dk no later than the 28th of May 2014.

 

Organization Team

Malene Freudendal-Pedersen (RUC), Sven Kesselring (AAU), Line Thorup (RUC), Enza Lissandrello (AAU), Aslak Aamot Kjærulff (RUC), Katrine Hartmann Petersen (RUC), Dorte Norgaard Madsen (AAU) and Birgitte Steen Hansen (RUC).

Scientific Committee

Malene Freudendal-Pedernsen (RUC), Ole B. Jensen (AAU), Lise Drewes Nielsen (RUC), Kevin Hannam (Leeds University), Sven Kesselring (AAU), Katharina Manderscheid (Universiät Luzern)

Call for papers – Convergence special issue on mobile media in Brazil

Convergence: The international journal of research into new media technologies
SPECIAL ISSUE CALL FOR PAPERS

Cell phones and communities: The use of mobile media in Brazil

Edited by:
Adriana de Souza e Silva (North Carolina State University)
Isabel Froes (IT University of Copenhagen)

Important dates:
Abstracts: February 15th, 2012 (500 words).
Notification of accepted abstracts: March 15th, 2012.
Full papers: June 15th, 2012 (8000/9000 words).
Notification of accepted papers: September 15th, 2012.

By the second decade of the 21st century, mobile phones have reached saturation levels in many countries in the world, surpassing the number of landlines and personal computers. Although initial scholarly interest on the social use of mobile phones focused on Europe, Asia, and the United States, the impact of mobile phone on the developing world (or Global South) is increasingly evident and perhaps much more profound. As Ling and Horst (2011) note, “the mobile phone has quietly provided people at the bottom of the income pyramid access to electronically mediated communication; often for the first time.” For many, the mobile device is the first phone, the first internet connection, the first TV set, and the first global positioning system.

Among developing nations, Brazil is a key site for studying the social dimension of mobile technologies. The country is part of the so-called BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China), an acronym that refers to fast-growing developing economies. Brazil is the fastest growing economy in Latin America, and has over 217 million mobile phones, which represents an average of 111 working devices per 100 inhabitants. The country has also experienced one of the fastest mobile phone growth rates in the world since 2005 (averaging 16.6% annually); is the largest mobile phone market in Latin America; and is the fifth-largest mobile market in the world in absolute numbers, with roughly 217 million subscriptions as of September 2011. However, numbers alone reveal little if not analyzed within a broader social, cultural, and economic framework. The focus on a homogeneous large-scale market leads to overly sanguine perspectives that often obscure how socioeconomic diversity causes and reflects mobile phone use. As in many developing countries, Brazil has astounding income gaps among different sectors of the population which influence and are influenced by technology development and use. For example, the use of high-end services such as mobile banking, and location-based services like Foursquare and Yelp is an intrinsic part of the daily mobile practices of the high-income population in the country. Conversely, the lower-income population in Rio de Janeiro is familiar with the diretão – a mobile phone that allows users to make clandestine calls to anywhere in the world with the use of an illegal sim card. However, Brazil has also been at the forefront of an experimental and innovative approach towards new technologies, forecasted in cultural events that focus on art, music and film festivals dedicated to new and creative uses of mobile technologies, such as the Mobilefest and Arte.mov.

Despite this cultural and socio-economic diversity, and the relevance of its marketing, the social use and development of mobile phones in Brazil is largely under theorized and poorly studied. With the goal of contributing to bridge this gap, this special edition invites essays that critically investigate the inter-relations among mobile technologies, culture, and social development within the Brazilian society.

Submitted manuscripts are encouraged (but not limited) to focus on four main areas:
(1) History of mobile phones in Brazil. Essays are encouraged to explore the development of mobile phones in Brazil, comparing them to the landline infrastructure and internet growth within the Latin America socio-economic and political framework. Authors may explore the development and use of new mobile services, such as the mobile internet, text messaging, mobile apps, etc.

(2) Social uses and appropriation of mobile phones. We welcome essays as empirical or theoretical studies dealing with the use and appropriation of technology by low-income communities. Of special interest are essays that explore how mobile and wireless technologies reconfigure the life of community dwellers and how people find new and unexpected uses for existing technologies.

(3) Mobile art and games. We invite essays that investigate mobile phones as artistic and gaming interfaces, including essays that explore uses of hybrid reality, location-aware and pervasive activities in educational contexts, media arts, and gaming.

(4) Location-based services. Submitted essays should investigate the uses and development of location-based services in Brazil, such as mobile annotation, location-based social networks, and mobile mapping.

Proposed abstracts (500 words) are due by February 15th, 2012. The authors will be notified about accepted abstracts by March 15th. Those accepted will be requested to submit full papers by June 15th, 2012. Full papers will undergo a double blind-review process. Submissions may be in the form of empirical research studies or theory-building papers and should be 8000/9000 words in English. Papers must also include a brief biography of the author(s). Proposals and inquiries should be sent electronically to Isabel Froes (icgf@itu.dk).

About the editors:
Adriana de Souza e Silva is Associate Professor at the Department of Communication at North Carolina State University (NCSU), affiliated faculty at the Digital Games Research Center, and Interim Associate Director of the Communication, Rhetoric and Digital Media (CRDM) program at NCSU.Dr. de Souza e Silva s research focuses on how mobile and locative interfaces shape people s interactions with public spaces and create new forms of sociability. She teaches classes on mobile technologies, location-based games and internet studies. Dr. de Souza e Silva is the co-editor (with Daniel M. Sutko) of Digital Cityscapes-Merging digital and urban playspaces (Peter Lang, 2009), the co-author (with Eric Gordon) of the book Net-Locality: Why location matters in a networked world (Blackwell, 2011), and the co-author (with Jordan Frith) of Mobile interfaces in public spaces: Control, privacy, and urban sociability (Routledge, 2012).

Isabel Fróes has received her Masters degree from the Interactive Telecommunications Programme at New York University (NYU) and a Bachelor’s degree in psychology from Pontifícia Universidade Católica, Rio de Janeiro, PUC-RJ in Brazil. She is a lecturer at the IT University of Copenhagen (Denmark), where she works both as a practitioner and scholar in the fields of communication, mobility, art and design. With a focus towards valuable interactions between people and technology, her research analyzes the future implications and current uses of digital media. In her courses she taps into the value of interactive elements in every arena and explores how they could affect the ways new concepts and activities are developed in distinct fields. She has presented some of these thoughts at various events such as the AAM conference (2009), and the IXDA South America (2010). She has taught various courses at Danish institutions such as IT University of Copenhagen, University of Copenhagen and Kolding School of Design as well as Tecnológico de Monterrey, Campus Querétaro in Mexico.

Proposals and inquiries should be sent electronically to Isabel Froes (icgf@itu.dk).

Call for papers – Themed Volume: Business Travel in an Information Age

Research in Transportation Business and Management

Call for Papers

Themed Volume: Business Travel in an Information Age: Management, Planning and Sustainability
Volume Editors: Jonathan V. Beaverstock, University of Nottingham, UK
Lucy Budd, Loughborough University, UK

The complex form, function and geography of business travel, both domestic and international, have been persistently overlooked in existing literatures on international human resource management, international business, the sociology of work and labour, transport demand, transport planning, management and logistics, and organizational studies. At the start of the second decade of the Twenty-First Century, and amid one of the worst economic downturns in recent history, the importance of business travel as a mode of capitalist production which enables organizations to attend in-house meetings or training, visit clients, pitch for new business, provide product support, attend trade fairs/conferences and visit sub-contractors and suppliers to monitor quality control or negotiate new business, has arguably never been higher or more controversial. For many workers, business travel, involving what can be best described as persistent or mundane travel, represents a normal component of the working day, but it is one which can adversely affect family life and individual health and wellbeing. For others, however, business travel constitutes a ‘perk’ and is a welcomed and deliberate lifestyle choice which helps to enhance personal careers, afford much job satisfaction and introduce variety to the working week.
Business travel ‘mobilities’ are increasingly recognised as being an important emerging discourse within business and management studies, sociology and human geography (particularly in transport and economic geography). In economic terms, business travel now appears to be a fundamental process in the production of the global knowledge economy. But, despite intra- and cross-border business travel being a significant feature of the twenty-first century workplace questions about the form, function, geography and carbon intensity of business travel as an economic practice and facet of contemporary transport panning and management have yet to be adequately addressed.
The formative aim of this themed volume is to address this research lacuna and explore some of the important contemporary debates associated with the organizational strategy, management, planning and sustainability of business travel in the twenty first century.

Specific topics of interest may include:

  • The organizational strategy and in-house management of business travel
  • The management of the business travel industry (logistics, airline operators, international hotels, specialist travel firms, land surface travel)
  • Business travel infrastructure (airport design, executive lounges, IT suites, security)
  • Aeromobilities and aeromobile elites
  • Land passenger transport mobilities and business travel
  • Planning for the business traveller
  • Business tourism
  • The cost-benefit analysis of business travel
  • Demand forecasting for business travel
  • Information technology and mode substitution for business travel
  • Environmental sustainability and business travel
  • Work-life-balance and the business traveller
  • Alternatives to business travel

Key dates
Submission deadline for abstracts: 1st December 2011
Invitations to submit full paper: 9th January 2012
Deadline for full paper: 1st July 2012
Notification of external reviews: 1st October 2012
Deadline for revisions: 1st December 2012
Publication: Spring/Summer 2013

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