Monday 31 October 2022

The Materiality of Digital Geographies: Agencies, Affects and Impacts

This Friday 4th November, the Digital Geographies Research Group will be holding its annual symposium as an online event.

The symposium is themed around the topic of materiality, departing from long-outdated notions that equate the digital with virtual realms detached from material reality. We will be exploring the hardwares and infrastructures involved in making what we perceive as ‘digital’, the impacts such technologies have on our physical environment, what agency different people/organisations have to influence how such technologies are used, the politics and possibilities of these potential uses, and the impacts these material processes ultimately have on the bodies, objects and institutions that we live with.

The event will feature a range of session types with plenty of space in between for breaks and lunch. There are three presentation sessions, each with four presentations brought together around particular sub-themes (I’m chairing the session on Place, Platforms, Politics). There is a section during lunch where I’ll be screening digital shorts (videos 2-5 minutes in length that explore an area of research related to the symposium theme). And finally, there will be a keynote presentation from Dillon Mahmoudi, whose research focuses on the relationship between technology, cities and capital. 

You can sign up for the event via the Eventbrite page here, and view the full programme below.