Jenny Sunden’s ‘What if Frankenstein(’s Monster) was a Girl? Reproduction and Subjectivity in the Digital Age’

in Smelik A. and Lykke N. (2008) ‘Bits of Life: Feminism at the Intersections of Media, Bioscience and Technology’, University of Washington Press

Jenny Sunden analyses Patchwork Girl (1995) in a structured text which begins with questions about endings, moves to the body of stories and ends with questions about the beginnings of narratives. She looks at the acts of writing and reading in hyperfiction and how these acts link to reproduction of both bodies and stories. Sunden’s account of Shelley Jackson’s work further explores the relationship between women and machines and ask questions about authenticity, fragmentation and reproductive anxiety.

See also

N. Katherine Hayles (2000) ‘Flickering Connectivities in Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl: The Importance of Media-Specific Analysis’, [online] http://pmc.iath.virginia.edu/text-only/issue.100/10.2hayles.txt

Feminism in London 2009 – report notes

I attended the Feminism in London 09 Conference on Saturday 10th of October as part of my fieldwork. It was a vivid event with estimated 200 people attending. I arrived there around 9.30 in the morning and left at 5pm, and during this time I interviewed participants and attended presentations. Beatrix Campbell and Susie Orbach(see entry) opened the day.

Beatrix Campbell talked about the transition from the 70s to neo-liberalism and how, today, feminism seems to operate in increasingly difficult conditions. Femininities in particular find themselves vulnerable, within inhospitable conditions of hypermasculinities. She mentioned how the emerging economic powers contribute to this climate. They work with us and also against us. What seem to be transforming at the end of the 70s however for Beatrix, is not really happening as women seem to have re-entered contingent conditions regarding child care and full-time work. This going in and out of paid labour essentially leads women to perpetual exhaustion. ‘OK, what now needs to happen?’ she asks, how do we manage the work time balance? She drew the audience’s attention to masculinities and how men’s institutions have relatively remained unchanged throughout the years, and also to the historic development of the wage system. She suggests that we need a new academic agenda which synchronizes the politics of life with institutional provisions. The problem is HOW do we go on with this project, how do we bring these issues into national conversation? Once again she stressed how the modernisation processes that take place in China and other emerging economies re-engineer the ways women and men relate and that these developments will alter ways of relating in the Western world. ‘What happens there will transform here’, she notes. So the ways to bring these issues into the public agenda are through ‘little doors’ that the state leave open for the people on the assumption that, being so hard to pursue, people will eventually give up. Saying this, Beatrix represented a tired swimmer who is swimming against the flow. She emphasised that we need to siege the tools, especially as democratic practices are being discredited. She then moved to address ‘violence’. To Beatrix violence has become a prominent public discourse which is located mainly within the criminal justice rather the social justice scene. This is problematic as this discourse seems to be stuck at the correlation between violence and masculinity. Working with violent men, she suggests that there are 80000 young men who are themselves hurt and wounded and that we need to know more about them and how violence has been catastrophic for them as well as for the victim. Additionally, we need to notice how in the midst if this violence discourse climate, we are witnessing a resurgence of hyper masculinities and hyperfemininities, which are particularly confusing for feminists of a more military style- the style she called the ‘fuck me but don’t fuck with me’. In China, the western style re-feminisation of women today is presented as a return to nature. In conclusion, feminism needs to define narratives of the relationships between men and women and this way shape these complicated issues as a political platform.

I will here share also some notes during the ‘what’s wrong with prostitution’ discussion, mainly the question time.

The question time included questions linking prostitution and domestic violence. How do we (feminists/ women) deal with women working in trafficking. Is prostitution inherently wrong? How do we reply against choice in prostitution? Criminalization of men using prostitution. Would feminists need to see why men do it in the first place- in the sense of a supply/demand situation. Prostitutes and local authority care experience. Australian model of commodifying women. How to tackle the argument that women need prostitution for men otherwise they will get out and rape. What about sex workers advocating their vocation as a career choice.

reformatting politics / notes

In the Introduction of Reformatting Politics: Information Technology and Global Civil Society, Jodi Dean, Jon W. Anderson and Geert Lovink (CRC Press, 2006) argue about the ‘postdemocratic governmentality of network societies’ that is evident in the connections between civil society organisations (CSOs) and networked ICTs (namely the internet, mobile phones, satellite radio and television). The main question that guides the volume is ‘how are activists and new technologies transforming each other and the global space in which they interact’, in other words they are interested in the impact of the use of ICTs on contemporary politics and power balance.

Their main argument is that ICTs enable affiliations and engagement that do not fit the democratic imaginary (they exceed it) and that a new set of values needs to be used when speaking about network societies and politics. Networks reformat politics because the old concepts associated with democracy, and essentially the nation state, namely accountability, representation, constituency and legitimacy, are replaced by the notions of:

• subsidiarity: the EU basic principle (Maastricht Treaty) of taking decisions at the lowest possible level – citizen
• ‘multistakeholderism’: as a critique of the welfare state – breaks large constituencies around specific gov progs into isolatable ’stakeholders’- provides CSOs with practical attainable goals and expertise that the org supplies. Constituency politics not meaningful.
• expertise : fin and tech knowledge, knowledge of procedures, rules, practices, language, ideals, principles of gov/pri funders (no more representation on basis of identity, but on basis of agendas, relationships, activities and issues)
• reputation management (rather than legitimacy)

Talking about ‘global civil societies’ cannot be merely an extension of the political topography of the nation state, it needs to  be informed by concepts of tech migration, informational mobility, reflexivity, mutable assemblages and contingent effects (see eg. Hardt and Negri 2000).

The levels of the argument thus are (how are politics reformatted by networks? — network communications are not tools for participation, this is not  a technological deterministic account, neither a celebration of the internet as information superhighway that makes democratic participation possible, it is rather a disruption of the western european image of democracy) -

(1) networks ARE the social morphology of the information age (2) networks are materially based on networked communications, eg. the internet (3) network communications introduce new ways of relating–> (4) networks operate in flat mode – indirection: distribution of responsibility across different levels. networks are hybrid, mobile, reflexive, performative (5) democratic values shift (6) appeals and politics, governance needs to take account of this new social morphology

BSSN Conference : THE ACADEMY & ACTIVISM

I will be presenting a paper at the Third Annual Conference of the Brighton and Sussex Sexualities Network (BSSN) which takes place on Thursday 24th September 2009. This one- day conference is hosted by Brighton and Sussex Universities and will be held this year at the University of Brighton.

This year’s theme: THE ACADEMY & ACTIVISM

full program and registration here.

Surviving feminism?

A basic web search for ‘feminist issue’ brings up predominately body image pages: mainly related to Susie Orbach’s book ‘fat is a feminist issue’, then make-up, not surprisingly prostitution, recently (and due to euro-elections& the BNP ‘threat’) anti-fascism, same-sex marriage, the (recession inspired) economy, teacher-pay, immigration, rape, the internet, and again, fat.

It occurs to me that naming something ‘a feminist issue’ is actually the issue – it actually signals that there is a green lights and then some weird creatures called ‘the feminist’ will step in and make it their job to preach what should and what should not be done about it. For example, in ‘Is make up a feminist issue’, the writer shouts

‘I remember thinking what the hell have feminists got to do with my legs, their mine, they can fuck off and deal with their own legs!’

and

‘For me, make up can help me get into a role but that doesn’t mean I am betraying the sisterhood, because my role is not exclusively ‘I am out to get men’s attention’. I just feel that where feminism is concerned they should stop focusing on surface issues, and I thought that was the whole point? To judge the person and not their looks’.

Feminists are the judge here and there is a lot of ‘betraying’ going on- I had a personal feeling of this when I seemed to function as a representative of ‘the feminists’ in a doctoral summer camp. Apart from the extreme inaccuracies that I heard (such as ‘Brighton is a place where people with AIDS chose to live’, ‘I think she is not a woman- Her confidence is not real- She must have a penis’, ‘feminism is a theory where women are superior to men’, and the overall understanding that feminism is this notion whereby everything must be  pure and sex is not permitted) there seemed to be a feeling of betraying feminism and a hostility to these women that stand there, like the ultimate judge for other womens’ actions. The guilt is such in these cases that even the mentioning of the word ‘feminism’ makes certain women adopt a defensive attitude of ‘what do you want? leave me alone’, or, at best, ‘I’ve been there, I know about all that, I’m now past it’ (as if feminism is a children sickness that you have to survive).

There is a war of definitions going on which concerns who does the definition. The war is between ‘the women’ and ‘the feminists’. ‘The feminists’ include media feminists like Julie Bindle who is a radical feminist, accused as transophobic, writing for the Guardian, or Germaire Greer who is a celebrity.  Or the f-word. And best-selling books that focus on body image. ‘The women’ include people who seem to adopt the ’sex and the city’ attitude, a no-wave post-feminism according to which there is no need for feminism any more. This is essentially an anti-feminism stance since feminism is in fact a political position and these women are not just uninterested to the scopes of feminism, they are antithetical to its very existence.

In scholarly feminism, ‘feminist issue’ is whatever contributes ‘to understanding of the oppression of women’ (Karen J. Warren (1995) The Power and the Promise of Ecological Feminism, in ‘Readings in ecology and feminist theology’, edited by Mary Heather MacKinnon, Moni McIntyre) and it varies, depending on the school of thought. For example, ecological feminism will say environmental degradation, pollution and destruction of natural resources is a feminist issue because of the local effects it has in women’s lives.

It is important that the epistemological crisis which postmodern feminism caused to ‘the world of knowledge’, allows thinking of the different competing forces which attempt to define what a ‘feminist issue’ is in a fruitful way. There is not one feminist issue, there is not one issue in any case as there is not ‘one true story of reality’ to be told (Harding, S. (2005) From the woman question in science to the science question in feminism, in ‘Knowledge and society: forms of knowledge’, edited by Nico Stehr, Reiner Grundmann). Especially as the efforts to define what is and what is  not ‘a feminist issue’ do not necessarily come from different strands of feminism but in fact different forces within the society, this can be seen as a hegemonic struggle for power over meaning. What is troubling me however is how to incorporate this ‘war’ over meaning and in fact ‘war’ over the scope of feminism in the postmodern seeking of solidarity. If ‘the women’ who declare war to ‘the feminists’ do not want to be represented by them and do not accept their personal lives to be bullied that is one thing. If they object to the very need for an anti-oppression discourse, then this does not really allow any space for solidarity, or for indeed for politics.

Readings in ecology and feminist theology

biopower, biosociality, biopolitics notes

Some definition notes about the concepts of biopolitics, biopower and biosociality.

Biopower appears in Foucault and The History of Sexuality vol. 1 and it examines sovereign power over bodies, or the Right of Death and Power over life. Life becomes the centre of attention in the modernist states of the late 18th century (developed in the 19th), whereby wars are no longer waged in the name of the sovereign but in the name of survival. There are two poles across which power is exersided- the personal (the body, the anatomic) and the public (regulations for polulation control, mechanisms of birth and death).

Paul Rabinow and Nikolas Rose in their ‘Thoughts on the concept of Biopower today’ clarify the distinction between biopower and biopolitics as: biopower is the attempt to intervene to human existence whereas biopolitics includes the strategies over knowledge, authorities and practices of intervention that are desirable and legitimate.

For Rabinow and Rose, we cannot project the concept of biopower to analyse today’s liberal societies because the notion of’the social’ has declined, several responsibilities have moved to transnational bodies (e.g. EU, WHO) and welfare states have taken up the role of the sovereign (they call these changes ‘mutation’ and they roughly refer to the politics of individual wellbeing(micro/molar) and the politics of polulations(macro/molecular), coming together under single governmental control bodies).

Rabinow’s (1992) concept of biosociality- as examined by Sarah Gibbon and Carlos Novas in the Introductory Chapter of  ‘Biosocialities, Genetics and Social Sciences’ (2008), but also explored in other chapters of the volume. The concept is interesting  to me because it can be employed to explain the emergence of new groupings around new biological identities. Social scientists have tried to understand how ‘potential transformations in understandings of “life” may be involved in reassembling existing cultural, social economic ethical and political practices’ (1). How emerging truths (about what life is, what human is) shape identities and activisms (disease related sociality-identity)-as definition of illness changes (reclassification of illness as genetic, being at genetic risk due to a ’suspicious’ gene), so do the identities and what is done about them. New opportunities for identifying with others–>organising is different.

TBC

bioethics timeline and notes

From ‘What is bioethics? A Historical Introduction’- Helga Kuhse and Peter Singer in (2001) ‘A Companion to Bioethics’, Blackwell Companions to Philosophy.

Bioethics is the result of, on the one hand, new developments in biomedical sciences and clinical medicine, on the other, the growing concern about the power of medical professionals. This is evident in ‘patent rights’ groups and community rights that aim to affect medical professionals’ decisions.

-older (un-termed) field of medical ethics: virtues of good doctor and the patient-doctor relationship

-1970 suggested term ’science of survival’ – aimed at an interdisciplinary study of the preservation of the biosphere, by Van Rensselaer Potter

-’bioethics’ as a term to address issues from health care and biomedical sciences but goes beyond the doctor-patient relationship. How:

• Its goal is not to set a code of precepts but a better understanding of the issues.

• Asks philosophical questions about nature of ethics, value of life, what is it to be a person, significance of being human.

• Embraces issue of public policy , directions and control of science.

Medical Ethics

Before Oath of Hippocrates (5th century BC), in tribal societies- Code of Hammurabi (Babylon 1750 BC)

Asclepias: that doctor equally serves slaves and rich.

The Oath establishes the principles of non-harm and benefit to patients. Sanctity of human life- and importance of Oath, linked to rise of Christianity.

Abortion has been central here, as the Oath prohibits it on the grounds of sanctity of human life. Later and in the thought of Thomas Aquinas, only the abortion of animated foetus was homicide. Other issues are care- especially as early as the Christians introduced the need to care and love neighbours, hence the development of monasteries as hospitals.

Nursing ethics

19th Century England- Florence Nightingale first nursing school: setting down the ethical precepts of nurses, esp. character

1899- International Council of Nurses , The American Journal of Nursing

1901- ‘Nursing Ethics for Hospitals and Private Use’ by Hampton Robb

At this point the gendered division of medical labour is already deeply established, with woman-nurse/ man-doctor and  nurse is responsible to doctor

1965- ‘The International Code of Nursing Ethics’ Item 7: ‘The nurse is under an obligation to carry out the physician’s orders intelligently and loyalty’.

1973-Feminism-self-consciousness, self-assertiveness of nurses– primary responsibility to the patients. Challenge to male dominated ethics by feminist philosophers -Nell Noddings 1984 that ethics is not universal but relationship specific, based on concept of care.

Bioethics

1954- Joseph Fletcher and early work ‘Morals and Medicine’.

After the 1960s- shift of interests of philosophy to practical issues: euthanasia and abortion, ethics of war and capital punishment, animal rights etc. Bioethics a critical discipline (asked questions that had not been asked before).

1962- artificial kidneys in the US and the artificial kidney centre in Seattle- selection of patients for treatment (life and death) had a class bias.

1967- the first heart transplant by South Africal Christian Barnard – allowed by the introduction of respirators in hospitals in 1950s- realisation of difference between heart death and brain death- The ‘Harvard Brain Death Committee’ introduced the criterion of death as the absence of nervous system activity.

Also issues of prolongation of life, when patient unable to say ‘no’. Work at this point questioned the ’sanctity of life’ approach vs. ‘quality of life’ for medical practice.

1969- ‘The Hastings Center Report’, by the Institute of Society, Ethics and the Life Sciences, founded by Daniel Callahan and Willard Gaylin

Henry K. Beecher and ethics of human experimentation- the cases and the public attention led to changes –>

1973- National Comission for the protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and behavioral research: regulations to protect the rights and interests of subjects of research.

Belmont Report: Respect for persons , beneficence and justice—> Principles of Biomedical Ethics.

1976- the landmark US case of Karen Ann Quinlan, that doctors had no legal duty to prolong life. Respirator assisted comatose condition- doctors refused family’s wish to end her life, so brought to New Jersey Supreme Court.

About the themes of the book: The Companion to Bioethics divides the interests of bioethics to Before Birth(embryos and fetuses), reproduction (population, cloning, assisted reproduction), genetics, life and death (medical decisions, voluntary euthanasia, disability), resource allocation, organ donation, AIDS, experimentation with human subjects, experimentation with animals, health care practice, and the teaching of ethics. Of these my primary interest is reproduction, before birth andnew genetics.

end of year 1

this has been a particularly busy period, hence the absence. As I completed the report of the pilot study, I started thinking about the next case study- making outlines and reading around. Then I presented my work so far at the Departmental DPhil day- this was the first public presentation of my work and turned out to be very interesting in terms of feedback, especially as I had anticipated a different sort of feedback. The presentation itself as a process, the publicity and the feedback raised questions for me- which I now have to tackle with a position paper. At first I thought that these issues were methodological and perhaps epistemological and that I would have to work further on my methodology chapter. This need still remains to be addressed- for example I was particularly interested in the construction of agent and subject in the research context and the materiality of this context. It seems however that these questions can wait and perhaps at this point would take me further away from the difficulty I have to face- and that is to articulate a position towards the theme I am writing about, namely queer and feminist activism. I have been escaping from this task all year, mainly because still don’t feel sufficiently informed to have a position. But I have been directly asked to do this and sooner or later it would happen. I know that this is not a final ’static’ position and only this way I can even start thinking about it. So I am now faced with some uncomfortable little ‘truths’ about my own political clingings and how they might be framed, in this sea of -isms and -ists.

In any case, this is a productive period, and a wildly exciting new era to be discovered for me, and this the  feminist scholarly work around biotechnologies, bioethics. I am a little behind with this work, but I am starting to have a vague idea about the feminist issues in this field of debates- and even though this is early to say, I think I am impressed with the clarity of arguments. But most of all I think I am enthusiastic about this whole new field of interest for me- once I have completed a stage of introductory reading I will formulate the focus for my case study.

Meanwhile, I have been accepted at the ECREA Doctoral Summer School and will spend two weeks there in August. And I am co-organising the Biodigital Lives workshop at Sussex in July, which I think will be by far one of the most intellectually intriguing events of the year.

Thoughts on the HPV Vaccine

Vaccine Policies and Discourses in the media

The HPV vaccine has been widely called ‘the anti-cancer vaccine’ and campaigns throughout the UK, the US and Europe have focused on vaccination for young girls as a preventative measure for cervical cancer. In October 2007 the UK Government, Scottish and Northern Ireland Executives, and the Welsh Assembly, announced the national immunisation programme. The HPV vaccination programme for girls aged 12-13 was officially launched on 3 September 2008, supplemented by catch-up campaign to vaccinate all girls until the age of 18 by 2010/11. The aim of the policy is to achieve a 90% uptake rate for the HPV immunisation programme within the defined cohort of children¹.

Objections to the measure mainly concern the health risks of the vaccination procedure and less the efficiency of the drug. Some discussion has emerged around the preference of the UK health services to administer the cost effective Cervarix², which protects against types 16 and 18 of the virus but not the types related to genital warts. Recently, a number of teenagers who suffered various side effects relating to the vaccine, launched the first legal action against GSK³. In the US, religious conservatives object to the policy (or other sexual health prevention measures) because it is believed to increase promiscuity.

The HPV immunisation program in the UK includes at the moment girls aged 9-18 with the Department of Health (DH) considering the possibility of future inclusion of boys. The urge (and recent request for further acceleration by the DH) with which the program was introduced to girls and the simultaneous caution towards boys, makes this an issue of feminist interest. Girls are the receivers of a medical intervention that has debatable benefits. It is important that the vaccine is presented as a means of prevention for cervical cancer and that the distinction between the HPV virus and cervical cancer is not highlighted. In the news, the vaccine is constructed as a preventive measure for a ‘female cancer’ and the focus shifts from the prevention of STDs. In a similar manner during the early 1900s, gonorrhoea was set apart from syphilis and other venereal diseases, whilst emphasis on the effects on women’s reproductive health led to vaccine therapy. At the time, feminist campaigners like Christabel Pankhurst used the argument of prostitution versus quantity of future generations in order to request political equality for women⁴. It is anticipated that, today, by creating distance from other STDs, the vaccine managed to surpass objections from moral right wing or religious groups as is the case in the US. It would be interesting to trace how the vaccine and the program of immunisation has been constructed as a women’s-health issue in the UK, drawing on parallel developments in the US and rest of EU, and how the representation of the vaccine has departed from ontological aspects (of the virus) to the physiological and gender specific (cervical cancer).

A survey conducted by Cancer Research UK (2007) found that 80% of the mothers agreed that the appropriate age for vaccination was between 10-14, and that 75% of mothers said they would probably or definitely accept the HPV vaccine for their daughter⁵. The Independent Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation advised that HPV vaccination would be most efficiently delivered through schools (NHS, 2007). At the same time, the policy is controversial regarding personal choice and parental responsibility. It states:

‘Competent young people are entitled to give consent to treatment when they have sufficient understanding and intelligence to understand fully what is

involved in treatment but ideally their parents will also be involved. When a young person has signed the consent form, the school nurse should complete

a ‘Checklist for Competency to Consent Form’ (2008: 6).

Anti-vaccination movements have predominately concerned childhood immunisation and public health threats. They have involved a wide range of individuals from various backgrounds and with diverse beliefs, but mainly focused on moral issues and personal freedom from state intervention⁶. The number of parents who resist routine childhood immunisations continues to grow⁷ and research has indicated that their fears concern safety rather than effectiveness⁸. Moving the responsibility for consent to children, as in the case of the HPV vaccination, has ethical implications while it practically eliminates the possibilities for anti-vaccination campaigns. This opens up the discussion around tensions created between age and sexual maturity, care and personal freedom⁹.

The vaccine brings together some of the discourses that have concerned feminisms, namely sexuality, technologies and reproduction. This vaccination program needs to be examined within the context of other technological interventions like IVF, and the context of feminist politics, especially as the intervention concerns the daughters of women who generationally might have lived through the echo of the Women’s Movement in Britain. The campaigning and research activities of feminist health and health technology professionals, but also the pro-choice movement play a significant role in the construction of woman’s health as a central issue for policy.

Notes

1‘This immunisation programme must be in line with the Department of Health (2006) guidance ‘Immunisation against infectious disease and in conjunction with the Health Protection Agency’s standards of competence and guidelines on immunisation (HPA 2005)’, source ‘Trust policy for the implementation of the HPV vaccination programme’, Southern Health and Social Care Trust, 2008

2 By GlaxoSmithKline http://www.cervarix.co.uk/index.asp . The US FDA has approved Gardasil manufactured by Merck in 2006.

3Lucy Johnston, ‘Teenage girls sue over cancer jab’, April 19,2009, Daily Express, [online]

http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/95924/Teenage-girls-sue-over-cancer-jab [accessed 10 May 2009]

4 Worboys, M. (2004) ‘Unsexing Gonorrhoea: Bacteriologists, Gynaecologists and Suffragists in Britain, 1860-1920′, Social history of Medicine, Vol. 17:1

5Cancer Research UK [online] [available from] http://info.cancerresearchuk.org/news/archive/pressreleases/2007/january/277742 [accessed 8 May 2009]

6During the 1853 Compulsory Vaccination Act, the anti-vaccination movement was constituted of both middle and working class people who saw public health policies as examples of class-focused legislation. Policies were compulsory, targeting working-class infants. Nadja Durbach (2000) explains how anti-vaccination campaigns helped to reorganize working-class identities around what was interpreted as violation of their bodies. It is interesting how a similar approach was used by E.P. Thompson (1963) when discussing the Luddist movement not as anti-technological, but as pivotal to the formation of the English working class.

7Levi, B., H. (2007) ‘Addressing Parents’ Concerns About Childhood Immunizations: A Tutorial for Primary Care Providers’, Pediatrics, Vol. 120: 1

8 Kumanan Wilson, Meredith Barakat, Sunita Vohra, Paul Ritvo and Heather Boon (2008) ‘Parental views on pediatric vaccination: the impact of competing advocacy coalitions’, Public Understanding of Science; 17; 231

9The discussion on vaccination is tangible to meanings of the Welfare State and national identity. In the US there has been discussion around the compulsory vaccination of immigrants entering the country. Even though this is not the case in the UK, there is controversy around discourses of the vaccine as a measure against an infectious disease and the vaccine as the prevention for cancer. This controversy opens up the discussion about ‘our’ girls, in need of protection, and the ‘other’ girls bringing the virus in the nation.

Suggested Bibliography

Biodigital Lives- registration open

At the Centre for Material Digital Culture, University of Sussex

Biodigital lives: making, consuming and archiving the lives of technoscience

14 July 2009, 9am – 5.30, Educational Development Building (EDB 315), University of Sussex, UK

registration form

Hosted by the Centre for the Economic and Social Aspects of Genomics (CESAGen), the Centre for Material Digital Culture and the Centre for Life History and Life Writing Research,

Convened by Dr Kate O’Riordan and Dr Adrian Mackenzie

Wednesday 3rd June – final deadline for registration there is no registration fee but participants must register in advance.

Note that the Journal of Media Practice Symposium will be taking place on the previous day.