Call for Workshop Papers: Making liveable (STS) worlds through reflexive methods
Vienna, Austria
Wednesday 31 May – Friday, 2 June 2023
Drawing on a long tradition of and commitment to reflexivity, situatedness, and positionality in STS research, we seek contributions for a book development workshop that highlights the ambiguous relations of researchers to their research subjects, including self-referential methods and practices such as auto-ethnography. The workshop will take place in Vienna from the evening of 31 May to mid-afternoon on 2 June 2023.
The promise of reflexivity as a core STS virtue and methodological principle is both moral and epistemic – reflexive research is deemed to be more ethical, and of higher analytical quality. In addition, feminist scholars who bring forward care ethics make an ontological argument: reflexivity enables us to contribute to worlds we perceive as desirable. Building on these assumptions, we ask what reflexivity (co-)produces in our research. How can reflexivity be translated into practice? How can it move beyond mere theoretical deliberations and commitments (Arias López et al. 2021)?
The workshop and resulting book project will explore how ethical, epistemic, and ontological promises of reflexivity can be mobilised in research practice, and how we can create caring relations between researchers and research ‘subjects’ and ‘objects’. Considering our research as performative not only of the phenomena we investigate but also of our researcher identities, we are also interested in how reflexivity transforms the subjectivities of researchers. Ultimately, we are concerned with the question: what kind of methods, techniques, and tools can be mobilised to faithfully ‘make and do’ reflexivity in research?
We seek contributions that consider how we can create more liveable spaces – in research and beyond – with reflexive methods. We want to initiate conversations about the ways in which the stories we tell with reflexive practices might ‘perform themselves into the material world’ (Law & Lin 2020), making our lived experiences visible, and allowing us to cultivate healthier relations. We are thus interested in engaging with scholars and scholarly work that reflect on research practices and reflexivity as an area of research, whether that is autoethnography or other self-referential or self-positioning practices and techniques. We are interested in contributions that, for example, explore care, reflexivity, how we should relate as a community, and forms of (multi-modal) representation.
We particularly encourage contributions that experiment with the form and presentation of their scholarly argumentation, and look forward to bringing a wealth of research topics and questions together to collectively reflect on how we enact spaces, research identities, and care with our academic practices. We envision a workshop that uses interactive and creative methods and formats to refine texts-in-progress, explore commonalities in our research, and critically reflect on our scholarly practices. To ensure a space for meaningful conversations and reflections about our works in progress, the number of participants is limited.
Applicants are asked to submit abstracts (1000 words) for papers that address the workshop themes. The deadline for abstracts is Monday, 20 February 2023.
The workshop is planned to result in an edited collection where contributions would be 6,000-8,000 words. If accepted, workshop participants will be expected to prepare a first draft of their manuscripts by 8 May 2023. These drafts will be shared among all participants and then discussed at the workshop, which will take place in Vienna, Austria from 31 May – 2 June.
Accommodation and refreshments will be covered for workshop participants. We will seek to accommodate any special needs or requirements (for instance relating to care responsibilities).
Timeline
- Deadline for abstracts: 20 February 2023
- Notification of acceptance/rejection: 6 March 2023
- Deadline for paper drafts: 8 May 2023
- Workshop in Vienna: 31 May – 2 June 2023
- Anticipated publication in 2024
To submit your abstract and register your interest please complete this form: https://forms.gle/qYRgRhq6wmeDudYZA
The workshop is organised by Esther Dessewffy, Ariadne Avkıran, Constantin Holmer, Bao-Chau Pham, Andrea Schikowitz, Fredy Mora Gámez, Kathleen Gregory, and Sarah Davies at the Department of Science and Technology Studies, University of Vienna.
If you have any questions regarding the submission or the workshop, please contact bao-chau.pham@univie.ac.at
The full call can be found here.