PhD Course - Technologies of Time

Organiser(s):
Associate Professor Steffen Dalsgaard, Technologies in Practice, IT University of Copenhagen
Associate Professor Christopher Gad, Technologies in Practice, IT University of Copenhagen
Assistant Professor Tim Flohr Sørensen, The Saxo Institute, University of Copenhagen
Assistant Professor Michael Eilenberg, Dept. of Society and Culture, Aarhus University

Keynotes:
Professor Carol Greenhouse, Princeton University
Lecturer Thomas Yarrow, Durham University
Professor Laurent Olivier, Musée d’Archéologie Nationale, Paris
Lecturer Matei Candea, Dept. of Anthropology, University of Cambridge and Dept. of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen

Discussant:
Professor John Law, the Open University and ITU 

Date(s) of the course:
Proposed: 2-4 October 2014 

Time:
2 October: 13.00-17.30 (dinner afterwards)
3 October: 09.00-16.30 (dinner afterwards)
4 October: 09.00-??

Room:
TBA

Course description:
Research in the humanities and social sciences depend increasingly on digital technologies. Such technologies affect how research is conducted and the knowledge that it produces, not least in terms of time. This workshop provides an opportunity to discuss ‘technologies of time’ in human and social scientific research practices with special attention to the engagement in fieldwork and similar kinds of empirical studies. This workshop is aimed at PhD students in a broad variety of disciplines, such as anthropology, archaeology, ethnology, history, science and technology (STS) and other related disciplines. The workshop invites papers dealing with the intersection of ‘time work’ and research, and not the least how specific (new) forms of technology reconfigure the temporality of the relation between researcher and object in a field of study.

Conventionally, different disciplines have been characterized by alternating empirical frameworks and methods. For example, archaeology has been associated with the study of material culture in the past; anthropology has been synonymous with studying social relations in the contemporary world, while STS has focused on the social and technological as intertwined and co-produced. At least two crucial aspects of these disciplines’ methods of inquiry surface, when considering the relationship between technology and time.

Firstly, fieldwork is a primary mode of research practice, and the intensity, span and nature of fieldwork as highly important. Secondly, such a research practice involves specific temporalities and, in turn, affects the researchers’ relationship to the object of study. 

This workshop aims at discussing these aspects and how they are interrelated. We are particularly interested in how they emerge in the context of different technologies, for instance those currently inspiring new research practices in archaeology, anthropology and STS. The workshop therefore invites PhD students engaged in empirical, ethnographic, historical or archaeological research to offer their reflections on time and temporality including the relationship between these themes, their research field and the object of study. The aim is to explore what dynamics emerge when disciplines meet in this perspective, and to strengthen the methodological and theoretical underpinnings of the participants’ research projects.

The topic includes two broad themes.

1) Contemporary demands on universities go towards cross- or interdisciplinary forms of research and comparison, and the comparison of research methods and objects may prove to engender fruitful debate (Candea 2013). Likewise, new digital technologies increasingly facilitate all kinds of research, but are the demands to technology comparable? And are the objects of study changing accordingly, and to what extent?

2) Apart from simply being located in time (i.e. given historical periods or epochs), research relies on methodological, analytical as well as theoretical endeavours on working with time, and field-sites can be said to involve temporalities and presence in time as much as in space (Dalsgaard and Nielsen 2013). 

The construction of the anthropological Other has long been acknowledged as based as much on temporal as spatial distance (Fabian 1983), even if the ramifications of this insight have hardly been explored to the extent that it deserves. One topic in this regard would be the implications of doing ethnographic research via internet technologies that allows instant updating and connectivity, and how the technologies conversely affect research by fostering demands for faster, more ‘relevant’ and up to date results that are aligned to contemporary affairs (e.g. Marcus 2013).
It is obvious that archaeology deals with material objects stemming from specific times (periods), but also in practice must handle how such objects are exposed to time and changing times in terms of conceptualisation, in the combination of artefacts from different times (Olivier 1999), and concretely in decay of the material. It is important to take into account how constructing the archaeological ‘Other’ relies on different technological developments in how to establish chronologies, making inferences about periods, and how to treat and thus preserve objects in ways that ‘take them out’ of time (which temporarily arrests decay). How, for instance, does the archaeological obsession with chronology and conservation affect notions of time in the past? 
To STS the obviously very intimate relation between how we think about time and the pervasiveness of technologies of times such as clocks and calendars calls for reflection and discussion no less in the light of digitalization.

Acknowledging that anthropology, archaeology and STS work with time to construct their objects and Others, the question nonetheless remains whether this diversity of temporalities that inform their respective research practices can be analysed in unison or comparison. Do the temporal research practices have anything in common across disciplines? And is it possible to generalize the role of time and temporality in field-based research by comparing the social and technological practices across disciplines?

Program:
Tursday Oct. 2

• 13.00-13.30 Welcome and introduction to the topic (Organisers)
• 13.30-14.30 Keynote Carol Greenhouse
• 14.30-14.45 Coffee break
• 14.45-15.45 First session of student papers 
• 15.45-17.30 Keynote Tom Yarrow

• 19.00-... Dinner

Friday Oct. 3

• 9.00-10.00 Keynote Laurent Olivier
• 10.00-0.30 Coffee break
• 10.30-12.15 Second session of student papers
• 12.15-13.15 Lunch
• 13.15-14.15 Keynote Matei Candea
• 14.15-14.45 Coffee break
• 14.45-16.30 Third session of student papers

• 19.00-... Dinner

Saturday Oct. 4

• 09.00-10.45 Fouth session of student papers
• 10.45-11.00 Coffee break
• 11.00-12.00 Discussion and rounding off (John Law and organisers)
• 12.00-13.00 Sandwich and farewell

• 13.00-?? Potential extracurricular activity: Informal roundtable about 'Mediated Time' (Morten Nielsen, Aarhus University) 

4 ECTS

• Reading a pre-circulated curriculum of app. 500 pages (50 hours)
• Writing of paper, which is pre-circulated to other participants (3 weeks prior to workshop) and preparing of comments (50 hours)
• Presenting one’s paper and commenting on one or two other fellow student papers (16 hours)