
The Socio-gerontechnology Network together with the Karl Landsteiner University of Health Sciences, the Technical University of Vienna, and VICESSE Research GmbH invites proposals for papers, posters, and sessions to be submitted to the 2024 Annual Meeting by 15th March 2024.
The Socio-gerontechnology Network
Since its inaugural meeting in 2017, the Socio-gerontechnology Network has provided a forum for interdisciplinary scholarship that explores the complex relations between ageing, technology, and society from various social sciences and humanities perspectives. Drawing on perspectives, theories, and methods from Age Studies (AS), STS, Critical Data Studies, Human Computer Interaction (HCI), Social, Cultural, and Critical Gerontology as well as (new) materialist sociology, the network aims at providing an interdisciplinary space for researchers interested in critical explorations of demographic and technological change. The network embraces both early and more established academic scholars and meets once a year.
2024 Meeting Theme: Shifting Relations
In shifting landscapes of demographic change and technological innovation, ageing and technology are phenomena that are increasingly characterized through their relationships with each other. In the last decade, researchers have explored various facets of this relational terrain between ageing and technology, reflecting on the social, infrastructural, cultural, and material forces through which ageing, care, health, and technology shape each other. Such engagements with the relationships between ageing and technology have highlighted how technological innovations not only address but also create discourses around demographic ageing. They have also made apparent how ageing and later life have always been shaped in relation to different forms of materiality and how both phenomena – ageing and technology – are assembled through and situated in dynamic relations between humans, non-humans and more-than humans.
In the last years, new and emerging forms of technological systems, particularly artificial intelligence and machine learning, have increasingly highlighted the datafied relations between ageing and technology. Many of these systems rely on massive amounts of data to track, surveil and measure ageing in various ways, often assuming that these data are somewhat neutral and truthful representations of reality – an assumption that has been increasingly challenged (among others) by scholars in the field of Socio-gerontechnlogy. These critical engagements with the datafication of ageing open up new reflections on the quantified and datafied aspects of ageing, questioning, for example, how humans grow older with and through their data, how data infrastructures age and how they create ageing, the role of data in a political economy of ageing or how new forms of age-related inequality, exclusion, discrimination, or bias emerge in algorithmic cultures.
With this years’ conference theme “shifting relations”, we want to open the SGN annual meeting to provide space and time to reflect on these different aspects of relationality that emerge when researching ageing, data and technology. This includes, for example, theorizing relationality as a concept in Socio-gerontechnology, empirically exploring different relationships between ageing and technology, engaging with diverse methods and methodologies to build, maintain, break, and repair relationships through research and activism in ageing and technology, or reflecting critically on our own practices of relation-building and boundary-making within and outside of the Socio-gerontechnology community.
We invite scholars interested in the relational terrain between ageing and technology in the broadest sense to submit their work. More specifically, topics for submissions may include, but are not limited to, the following (list in alphabetical order):
The Call
We look forward to discussing these questions with you at our 2024 Annual Conference and invite submissions for papers, posters, thematic sessions, and workshops:
Submission format: Please include the title, author name(s), affiliation(s), and email(s), and an abstract of max. 300 words. For session or workshop submissions, please also include the individual contribution titles and authors (for paper sessions) or collaborators, as appropriate.
Please submit your paper, poster or session/workshop proposal via e-mail to socio-geront...@kl.ac.at by 15th March 2024.
Authors will be notified about the decision on 30th April 2024.
Conference Fees
Conference participation is free for members of the Socio-gerontechnology Network. Participation fee for non-members is 50 EUR. A reduced fee (30 EUR) is available for students (including PhD students), un/underemployed scholars and scholars from non-OECD countries. Please follow your own judgment if you fit in this category.
Socio-gerontechnology Travel Stipends
We are happy to announce that we are able to make four travel stipends of 200 EUR available for presenting a paper or poster at the conference. Presenters who are eligible for a reduced conference fee can apply for travel stipends. Please include your motivation for applying for a travel stipend in your abstract submission.
Timeline
15th March Call for proposals deadline
30th April Decision Letters & Registration Opens
15th June Announcement of the program
19th – 20th September Conference
Organising Committee
This conference is hosted by Karl Landsteiner University of Health Sciences, the Technical University of Vienna, VICESSE Research GmbH and supported through the ALGOCARE project (funded by the Vienna Science and Technology Fund).
| Daniel López Gómez Associate professor Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3) dlop...@uoc.edu ORCID 0000-0003-0095-9142 Web |
| UOC Campus Interdisciplinary R&I Hub Rambla del Poblenou, 154 08018 Barcelona uoc.edu in3.uoc.edu carenet.in3.uoc.edu |
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