From Pessimism to Promise: Alternative Imaginaries of Social Digital Innovation from the Global South to Europe
This PhD workshop brings debates on social digital innovation into closer dialogue with Science and Technology Studies. It starts from the premise that digital technologies are never only technical systems, but are always shaped by imaginaries, power relations, situated practices, and contested futures. Building on Payal Arora’s invitation to move from pessimism to promise, the workshop asks how alternative imaginaries of digital life emerge through everyday practices, particularly in and from the Global South, and what these perspectives can contribute to current debates in Europe.
Rather than reproducing dominant narratives of technological inevitability, crisis, or solutionism, the workshop foregrounds how actors imagine, appropriate, and rework digital technologies in ways that open different social and political possibilities. Short contributions by PhD researchers will explore how alternative imaginaries are articulated in empirical settings, materialised in infrastructures and platforms, or negotiated through practices of participation, care, resistance, and collective agency. The workshop aims to create a space for conceptual exchange and constructive discussion on how STS can help us better understand the promises, tensions, and limits of socially oriented digital innovation across diverse contexts.
PhD Workshop (co-located with the DIGHUM Conference https://dighum.wien)
Agenda
9:00 Coffee and tea
9:30 to 9:40 Welcome and framing
Introduction to the workshop theme and brief STS framing on imaginaries, situated practices, and contested technological futures.
9:40 to 10:15 Opening keynote
- Payal Arora (Utrecht University),
Gilberto Vieira, discussant (datalabe Brazil)
10:15 to 11:45 PhD student inputs
- Weijie Huang, PhD candidate, and Feminist AI researcher at Inclusive AI Lab, Department of Media and Cultural Studies, Utrecht University
- Rana Kuseyri, PhD candidate & Responsible AI Researcher at Inclusive AI Lab, Department of Media and Culture Studies, Utrecht University
- Fabian Fischer, PhD candidate, STS University of Vienna, and scientist at Department of Technology Assessment, Austrian Academy of Sciences
- Constanze Kerres, PhD candidate, and Research & Teaching Associate at Vienna University of Economics and Business
- Saskia Kaltenbrunner, PhD candidate Department of Political Science, co-supervision at Department of Innovation and Digitalisation in Law, University of Vienna
- Carine Roos, PhD candidate, School of Sociological Studies, Politics and International Relations, University of Sheffield
11:45 to 12:30
Joint discussion and Closing reflections moderated discussion with Payal Arora, Gilberto Vieira, PhD presenters, and participants on what STS contributes to the study of social digital innovation and alternative imaginaries.
Please register via: https://shorturl.at/YyTls (first come, first serve)