Perspectives in Humanities and Social Sciences: Hinting at Interdiciplinarity5th Edition: Mapping Digital Futures (Iassy, Roumanie)

Call for Papers
PERSPECTIVES IN HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES: HINTING AT INTERDISCIPLINARITY
5th Edition: Mapping Digital Futures
Iași, Romania, 23-24 May 2018

COORDINATOR:
“Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iași, Romania
Department of Interdisciplinary Research in Social Sciences and Humanities PHSS Center for Interdisciplinary Integration and Knowledge Transfer in Humanities

Framework and Aims:
Nowadays, technology does not constitute a separate sphere anymore; it is profoundly involved and embedded in the majority of domains, from daily life to modern devices of life research and enhancement. In their turn, digital technologies cover a vast area of methods (big data visualization, 3D-modelling, data mining) and practices (hashtag movements, gaming in alternative realities, computer-mediated and phone-mediated communication) that have systemic effects on society, economy, and politics. We are living in a brave new world, that is, the digital world: we interact online, we are able to make digital multitasking, we communicate through various means, we practice new forms of commerce and banking, and, perhaps most of all, we share information. And things have been pushed even further: the robot Sophia received Saudi citizenship, while AlphaZero, after a few hours of “learning”, triumphed over the best chess soft that has ever been invented.

The digital turn alters the patterns that have been used before for interpreting the world, the models of interaction, and those of individual and collective expression, at the same time challenging both sciences and arts to yield new approaches and move for new hypotheses in current situations. In this context, one can notice a higher enthusiasm for exploring the inter-disciplinary relationships, a growth of interdisciplinary studies as well as a serious questioning of traditional paradigms on account of the people’s increased computer-reliance.
Have the humanities a digital future? To what extent do the digital methods alter
the traditional way of research in humanities and social sciences? How can the culture of democracy, the respect for diversity and mutual understanding be promoted though social media? How will technology change the approaches to problems concerning private life, security and conflict mitigation? To answer these questions, we propose several bridgehead ideas:
 

The digital turn and its impact on sciences
 Digital technologies and life sciences: bioinformatics, biolinguistics,
neurosciences, sociobiology
 Digital geography: digital mapping; digital human geography; methods and
techniques of data spatial visualization; the geography of virtual worlds;
community mapping and emotional maps
 E-linguistics: collecting, processing, and modelling of linguistic data; databases
and lexicographic corpora (Perseus, TLFI – Trésor de la Langue Française
Informatisé, AMPER – Atlas Multimédia Prosodique de l'Espace Roman, etc.);
technologies of natural language processing and speech synthesis
 Artificial intelligence nowadays: technological challenges and ethical concerns
 Philosophical approaches and interpretations to the effects of new technologies
 Methods of quantitative analysis vs methods of qualitative analysis in social
sciences and humanities: sociology, linguistics, anthropology, translation studies,
literary studies, etc.
 

New media, new experiences and new forms of sociality
 Forms and practices of communication in the digital era: computer-mediated
communication; mobile communication; social networks; online gaming; blogs
and vlogs; the role of media technologies in lifelong learning
 Digital social infrastructures (e-tax platforms, online voting, etc.); technologies of
personal data storage and of mass surveillance
 Digital economy: e-business and e-commerce; e-business infrastructures; fiscal
challenges in the digital economy; innovation, growth, and prosperity in the
digital age; policies of the digital revolution; the work market in the global
economy
 Digital tools used in branding and advertising, event management and PR
 The economy of reputation in online media: reviews, visibility, crises, and
solutions
 Digital tourism: new forms of tourism and corresponding technologies (etourism,
m-tourism, smart-tourism, and so forth)
 New media and political life: online protests, Facebook and Twitter in elections
 Participatory culture, collective intelligence and new forms of sociality:
participatory journalism, user-generated content, types of online communities
 

Cultural and artistic practices in the digital era
 Digital architecture and design: smart urban planning; digital creative industries;
eco-design; digital design between users and aesthetic standards
 Digital archives: digitalization of manuscripts and historical sources; virtual
museums and sites of collective memory in online media; cultural patrimony in
the digital era
 Types of writings and reading in online media: digital fiction, digital collaborative
writing, digital storytelling
 Intermediality and intertextuality in literature, film, visual arts and performance
arts
 Practice and reception of literature in the global age: “the network” of world
literature; the planetary canon of literature; digital humanities
 Networks and media of communitarian, national and global memory: interconnectivity vs memory divide; empathy and participatory memory; artistic
media of postmemory
 

Conference languages: Romanian, English, and French.
The Abstracts will be written in English and sent at
phssconference2018@gmail.com.

For more information go to https://conferencephss.wordpress.com/.
 

Important deadlines

Submission of Abstracts: April, the 1st 2018
Notification of Acceptance: within 7 days from the date of submission
Fee payment: April, the 15th 2018
Final Paper Submission: June, the 20th 2018

Conference fee:
150 RON (for participants affiliated to Romanian and Moldavian universities)
70 EUR (for participants from abroad)
For registration and other details concerning the selection of proposals, please visit us at:

https://conferencephss.wordpress.com/.