Call for Tracks @ EASST 2014

The organization of EASST 2014 in Torun is slowly coming up, and the organizing team is calling for tracks, which then will be turned into CfPs. This is a really good opportunity to team up and push your research agenda, particularly because the 2014 topic wants to draw attention to issues of social inequality. Learning my lesson form the 4S, something with Big Data in the title might be a good idea, although:

Quote attributed to Dan Ariely of Duke University. Picture via beyondanalysis.net

That being said, here's the original call for tracks:

Help needed for cryptoparties // Berlin area

For those who are in the Berlin area and are interested in activism: Hauke Laging is looking for help to bring CryptoParties to the Technical and Free Universities in Berlin. Cryoptoparty is an international initiative to learn together how to use basic cryptographic tools; i.e. how to send and receive encrypted emails, or how to encrypt sensitive data on your hard drive. And because almost everything is more fun with beer, it's a party. Hence their motto: "Party like it's December 31st, 1983". If you're interested, contact Hauke at hauke [dot] laging [at] openpgp-schulungen [dot] de. And for those who aren't based in Berlin, but are interested in the concept of cryptoparties, here's the website and the link to their handbook.

ISTC-Social Symposium on Information Materialities

The ISTC-Social hosts a symposium on the materialities of information at UC Irvine. Both full-fledged studies and work in progress are encoraged. So if you're in the area, this might be an excellent opportunity to discuss your ongoing work. Surveillance-related submissions are explicitly welcome! Note that the deadline has been extended to November 21. Here's the original call:

Discipline and Punish Audiobook

Is this nerdy? Geeky? Brilliant? I'm not sure, but it's definitely too cool NOT to post it. Foucault's "Discipline and Punish" was released as an audiobook version, narrated by Simon Prebble. Listen to a preview sample here! :)

Futures of Forensics Amsterdam, Nov 22

The Futures of Forensics symposium hosts an interesting mix of speakers who will talk about current developments in the forensic sciences and about legal and governance issues regarding the use of  forensic data. It is also the launch of the European Network for the Social Studies of Forensics (EUnetSSF).

The talks will address topics such as DNA phenotyping, familial searching and the use of photographic images in criminal investigation. It will be quite a unique opportunity to engage not only with the social sciences and humanities, but also with applied forensic science.

STS Conference Graz: Critical Issues in STS

Here's a call for the STS Conference in Graz, Austria, May 2014. Session 1 (social justice and diversity) and session 7 (the politics of ICTs) might be friendly towards surveillance research.

CFP: The politics of surveillance

Here's an interesting workshop in Canada for surveillance studies focusing on activism. This might be a good opportunity for STS/surveillance scholars working on public engagement issues. There also seems to be an opportunity to publish a paper.

New documentary about drones (streaming)

Unmanned: America's Drone Wars is a documentary directed by Robert Greenwald, presented by the Brave New Foundation. It can be streamed for free here.

The documentary first and foremost shows the devastating impact of drones on the lives of local communities in Pakistan. Furthermore, it presents an extreme case of camera observation from a distance, and the (fatal) assumptions and generalisations that are part of these practices.

Colonial Surveillance

Elia Zureik recently published an article on colonial surveillance (in the Oct/Nov 2013 issue of Red Pepper). Census-taking, finger printing and other forms of colonial oversight, he argues, were a crucial part of constituting and ruling over colonial populations. Not only are these surveillance practices relevant for the colonised word, they also 'spilled over' to the colonising countries. Zureik illustrates this with historical cases (Alfred McCoy's research about the relation between the US and the Philippines), and with contemporary practices (the use of drones by Israel).

4S - 2014 edition

 And it goes on... "The king is dead, long live the king!" Or rather: just as 4S has come off the calendar for 2013, 4S is back on for 2014. Here's the full announcement for Buenos Aires:

CfP: STS in Singapore

News from the Calls front! In short: Global STS, 14-15 March 2014, Singapore, featuring a keynote by Wiebe Bijker, endorsed by 4S, submission deadline 15 January 2014.
Might well be worth looking into!