Mobilities and the Digital – 21 June 2024
Elm House, University of Birmingham
Supported by the Institute for STEMM in Culture and Society (ISTEMMiCS)
The abstract conference programme can be accessed here.
Registration Details
Registration is now OPEN for this year’s symposium. Please see the RGS link to register here.
Mobilities are increasingly being disrupted and transformed through the digital. These changes are (re)shaping the ways people, goods, and information move through space and time. There are now more and more examples of AI-enabled technologies materialising in cities including in the form of trials of automated vehicles, robotic delivery services, or experiments with drone technologies (Cugurullo et al., 2023). The interest in tracing the material contexts in which these technologies develop continues to evidence the every day and differentiated ways in which digitally-mediated mobilities are and will be experienced. Recent times of crisis have further stressed the importance of the digital in (re)shaping im/mobilities with COVID-19 highlighting shifts in relations of movement during times of national and global disruption (Akyelken and Hopkins, 2023). In feminist digital geographies and geographies of sexuality scholarship, the intertwining of corporeal and digital social relations is shown to be generative of mobilities at bodily scales hitherto underexplored within transportation-focused research. Examples like GPS-enabled and physical activity tracking devices further highlight the bodily scales in which technological mediations of movement operate. These are just some of the many examples digital geographers are engaging with and working through using concepts such as code/space (Kitchin and Dodge, 2011), spatial mediation (Leszczynski, 2015), and the automatic production of space (Thrift and French, 2002). This conference aims to understand transformations engendered by and through the digital on mobilities and how these changes are being experienced.
Programme
The Mobilities and the Digital conference features keynotes from Professor David Bissell (University of Melbourne), researcher and author of Transit Life: How commuting is transforming our cities. The keynote panel will feature researchers and practitioners developing social science approaches and insights into emerging technologies, perspectives on innovation studies, and insights into responsible research innovation. The book panel will discuss Artificial Intelligence and the City: Urbanistic Perspectives on AI (Routledge) edited by Federico Cugurullo and colleagues. We also have over 16 exciting papers and digital shorts to share across the day at the conference. Please find the short form programme here.
Registration
We have worked to minimise costs of the conference. Registration includes the full conference and refreshments.
Please register for this event by June 11th using this link.
| RGS Member Registration (In-person) | £30 |
| Non-RGS Member Registration (In-person) | £35 |
| RGS Member Postgrad and precarious employment registration | £12 |
| Non-RGS Member Postgrad and precarious employment registration | £17 |
| Online only | £0 |
Travel Bursaries
Travel bursaries are available to those who need support in travelling to Birmingham for this event. Bursaries of up to £50 to help cover transportation or hotel costs have been made available thanks to the kind support of the Royal Geographical Society. Applications for bursaries will open alongside registration.
Travel and Accommodation
For information on travelling to University of Birmingham and local accommodation options, including discounted hotels, please follow the link to this webpage.