Delighted to pass this CfP along to those interested for the Global Digital Geographies: Digitalising the Territorial / Territorialising the Digital (Onñline Annual Symposium of the Digital Geography Research Group, to he held 19-20 June 2025.
The CfP and submission details follow below along with references.The Digital Geography Research Group of RGS-IBG invites submissions for its annual symposium 2025 on the theme "Global Digital Geographies: Digitalising the Territorial / Territorialising the Digital."
By global digital geographies, we aim to foreground two interconnected dimensions of the global. First, we engage with geography’s long-standing critique of the binary conception of territory and network in the context of globalization—a debate that has gained renewed urgency and complexity with the advent of digitalisation and information technology. Second, we envision this as a global platform for scholarly exchange, bringing together diverse perspectives and insights on these topics from different regions around the world. With that in mind, the online symposium will be organized across three regional sections—Asia, Europe, and Africa—to better accommodate global participation.
Confirmed speakersPaul C Adams, University of Texas at AustinAzadeh Akbari, University of TwenteTheme and Focus
Jordan Branch, Claremont McKenna College
Mirjam de Bruijn, University of Leiden
Ayona Datta, University College London
Iginio Gagliardone, University of the Witwatersrand
Georg Glasze, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität
Sam Kinsley, University of Exeter
Alexandru-Codru Preda, Lingnan University
Norma Möllers — Queen’s University
Carwyn Morris, University of Leiden
Luke Munn, University of Queensland
Jiang Xu, Chinese University of Hong Kong
In 1998, Stephen Graham (1998) posed a provocative question—“The End of Geography or the Explosion of Place?”—to explore how flow-oriented information and communication technologies (ICTs) challenge our conventional understanding of territory. Nearly two decades later, Milton Mueller (2017) raised the opposite question—“Will the Internet Fragment?”—reflecting growing concerns about digital sovereignty and state practices of enclosure, fragmentation, and governance.
These contrasting perspectives reveal the non-linear evolution of digital geographies—oscillating between flow and fixity, circulation and enclosure (Barabasi, 2002; Glasze et al., 2022; Zhang & Morris, 2023). While early imaginaries of an open and networked world emphasized fluidity and deterritorialization, the recent buzzword "digital sovereignty" exemplifies the assertion of nationalist logic of territory, wherein geopolitical rivalries, regulatory enclosures, and cyber securitization strategies reinforce spatial boundaries even as open data movement proliferates (Glasze et al., 2022; Lambach, 2020; Schindler et al., 2021).
Studies on digitalising the territorial demonstrate how digital technologies transform our society (Van Dijck, 2021; van Dijck et al., 2018), from socioeconomic relations to material landscapes (Luque-Ayala & Neves Maia, 2018; Wang & Tomassetti, 2024). Geospatial technologies (Latour et al., 2010; Leszczynski, 2012; Luque-Ayala & Neves Maia, 2018), drones (Gregory, 2011; Jackman & Brickell, 2021; Yao & Wang, 2024), and computational mapping practices (Atkins, 2021; Woods et al., 2024) not only represent but actively produce territories. These processes operate as sociotechnical assemblages that reshape ethnical, urban, regional, and volumetric spatialities (Adey, 2010; Datta, 2024; Yebra López, 2021).
Conversely, territorializing the digital entails examining how states, corporations, and communities inscribe territorial logic into digital infrastructures, data and prosumer-citizens (Lambach, 2020; Lehdonvirta, 2022; Möllers, 2021). The digital infrastructures --- from cable and data hubs to platforms and prosumer-citizens --- which were initially envisioned to support and channel the open flow of data, may concurrently serve as the very foundation for embodying the ideas of enclosure and demarcation (Lehdonvirta, 2022; Möllers, 2021; Munn, 2023).
Digital geographies are thus not immaterial or abstract but grounded in terrestrial politics, the operation of which depends on terrestrial resources—metals, energy, and labour—implicated in global extractive economies (Latour, 2011). Such an understanding is crucial for unveiling the patterns of digital neo-colonialism in the Global South (Fraser, 2019; Mouton & Burns, 2021; Tait et al., 2022). A better understanding of digital-territorial dynamics cannot be achieved through an isolated focus on any single region. Instead, it must be situated within a global arena, where practices of “digitalising the territorial” and “territorializing the digital” across different areas and regions can be introduced, discussed, and used to inform conceptual efforts.
This symposium aims to serve as a global platform for such exchanges, emphasizing the importance of scholarly dialogue across diverse parts of the world. We invite papers that investigate the mutually constitutive processes of digitalising the territorial and territorializing the digital, as these unfold across different scales and are shaped by a variety of actors. Contributions are welcome on, but not limited to, the following themes:Digital sovereignty, cybersecurity, and data governance
Digital technologies and their re-presentation of territories
Digital infrastructures
New patterns of territorial development (circulation, logistics, and enclosure ) shaped by digitalization
Techno-nationalism and digital statecraft on all fronts, from the jurisdiction of data and digital infrastructure to citizen-subjects
Ontological approaches to digital territories and (geo)politics
Call for contributions
We are seeking the following types of contributions to the symposium:Individual Paper –please compose your abstracts of 250–300 words that outline the paper’s core arguments, methods, and contributions. Please include the paper title, author name(s), and affiliations.
Practice-based Session – An opportunity to showcase innovative and alternative approaches. These may be interactive, skills-based, practical or workshop-type contributions.
Pre-organised Panel/Session – Three to five individual papers speaking to a coherent theme concerning digital territories. Or combined Practice-based Sessions, run by three to six attendees.
Digital shorts – digital shorts are short videos (between 2 and 5 minutes in length) that introduce, or summarise, an aspect of your research. Your recorded video could discuss:Recent research findings
An emerging research idea or interest
A new or upcoming research output, publication, creative work, etc.
Research methodology
Approaches to teaching
Uses of digital technologies within academia
This format has been deliberately designed to require limited preparation, so is ideal for postgraduates, early career researchers, those with caring responsibilities, or other commitments. You can view examples of digital shorts on the DGRG YouTube channel.For accessibility purposes, please provide a transcript when submitting a digital short so that your video can be accurately subtitled.
Deadline for Abstracts/sessions/digital shorts: April 14 2025, Monday
Notification of Acceptance: April 21 2025, Monday
Symposium Date and Venue: 19-20 June 2025, online
Symposium Organising Committee of DGRG
June Wang, Tess Osborne, Sammia C Poveda Villalba, Adam Packer, Harrison Smith, Sam Kinsley, Olivia Fletcher
Submissions and Inquiries:
Please submit your abstract to the link below:
https://qualtricsxmn4sh2rv6f.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_9YuL5yhVu5fhhyK
Please send questions to June.wang@cityu.edu.hk.
For more information, please check the link below:
https://digitalgeographiesrg.org/digital-geographies-research-group-annual-symposium-2025-cfp
Digital Geographies Research Group Annual Symposium 2025: Call For Papers
Annual Symposium of the Digital Geography Research Group, RGS-IBG
19-20 June 2025, online
Global Digital Geographies: Digitalising the Territorial / Territorialising the Digital
The Digital Geography Research Group of RGS-IBG invites submissions for its annual symposium 2025 on the theme “Global Digital Geographies: Digitalising the Territorial and Territorialising the Digital.”
By global digital geographies, we aim to foreground two interconnected dimensions of the global. First, we engage with geography’s long-standing critique of the binary conception of territory and network in the context of globalization—a debate that has gained renewed urgency and complexity with the advent of digitalisation and information technology. Second, we envision this as a global platform for scholarly exchange, bringing together diverse perspectives and insights on these topics from different regions around the world.
Confirmed speakers
· Azadeh Akbari, University of Twente
· Jordan Branch, Claremont McKenna College
· Mirjam de Bruijn, University of Leiden
· Ayona Datta, University College London
· Iginio Gagliardone, University of the Witwatersrand
· Georg Glasze, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität
· Sam Kinsley, University of Exeter
· Alexandru-Codru Preda, Lingnan University
· Norma Möllers — Queen’s University
· Carwyn Morris, University of Leiden
· Luke Munn, University of Queensland
· Jiang Xu, Chinese University of Hong Kong
· Sammia C Poveda Villalba
Theme and Focus
In 1998, Stephen Graham (1998) posed a provocative question—“The End of Geography or the Explosion of Place?”—to explore how flow-oriented information and communication technologies (ICTs) challenge our conventional understanding of territory. Nearly two decades later, Milton Mueller (2017) raised the opposite question—“Will the Internet Fragment?”—reflecting growing concerns about digital sovereignty and state practices of enclosure, fragmentation, and governance.
These contrasting perspectives reveal the non-linear evolution of digital geographies—oscillating between flow and fixity, circulation and enclosure (Barabasi, 2002; Glasze et al., 2022; Zhang & Morris, 2023). While early imaginaries of an open and networked world emphasized fluidity and deterritorialization, the recent buzzword “digital sovereignty” exemplifies the assertion of nationalist logic of territory, wherein geopolitical rivalries, regulatory enclosures, and cyber securitization strategies reinforce spatial boundaries even as open data movement proliferates (Glasze et al., 2022; Lambach, 2020; Schindler et al., 2021).
Studies on digitalising the territorial demonstrate how digital technologies transform sociospatial relations (Luque-Ayala & Neves Maia, 2018; Wang & Tomassetti, 2024) and material landscapes, redefine Geospatial technologies (Latour et al., 2010; Leszczynski, 2012; Luque-Ayala & Neves Maia, 2018), drones (Gregory, 2011; Jackman & Brickell, 2021; Yao & Wang, 2024), and computational mapping practices (Atkins, 2021; Woods et al., 2024) not only represent but actively produce territories. These processes operate as sociotechnical assemblages that reshape ethnical, urban, regional, and volumetric spatialities (Adey, 2010; Datta, 2024; Yebra López, 2021).
Conversely, territorializing the digital entails examining how states, corporations, and communities inscribe territorial logic into digital infrastructures, data and prosumer-citizens (Lambach, 2020; Lehdonvirta, 2022; Möllers, 2021). The digital infrastructures — from cable and data hubs to platforms and prosumer-citizens — which were initially envisioned to support and channel the open flow of data, may concurrently serve as the very foundation for embodying the ideas of enclosure and demarcation (Lehdonvirta, 2022; Möllers, 2021; Munn, 2023).
Digital geographies are thus not immaterial or abstract but grounded in terrestrial politics, the operation of which depends on terrestrial resources—metals, energy, and labour—implicated in global extractive economies (Latour, 2011). Such an understanding is crucial for unveiling the patterns of digital neo-colonialism in the Global South (Fraser, 2019; Mouton & Burns, 2021; Tait et al., 2022). A better understanding of digital-territorial dynamics cannot be achieved through an isolated focus on any single region. Instead, it must be situated within a global arena, where practices of “digitalising the territorial” and “territorializing the digital” across different areas and regions can be introduced, discussed, and used to inform conceptual efforts.
This symposium aims to serve as a global platform for such exchanges, emphasizing the importance of scholarly dialogue across diverse parts of the world. We invite papers that investigate the mutually constitutive processes of digitalising the territorial and territorializing the digital, as these unfold across different scales and are shaped by a variety of actors. Contributions are welcome on, but not limited to, the following themes:
· Digital sovereignty, cybersecurity, and data governance
· Digital technologies and their re-presentation of territories
· Digital infrastructures
· New patterns of territorial development (circulation, logistics, and enclosure ) shaped by digitalization
· Techno-nationalism and digital statecraft on all fronts, from the jurisdiction of data and digital infrastructure to citizen-subjects
· Ontological approaches to digital territories and (geo)politics
Call for contributions
We are seeking the following types of contributions to the symposium:
· Individual Paper –please compose your abstracts of 250–300 words that outline the paper’s core arguments, methods, and contributions. Please include the paper title, author name(s), and affiliations.
· Practice-based Session – An opportunity to showcase innovative and alternative approaches. These may be interactive, skills-based, practical or workshop-type contributions.
· Pre-organised Panel/Session – Three to five individual papers speaking to a coherent theme concerning digital territories. Or combined Practice-based Sessions run by three to six attendees.
· Digital shorts – digital shorts are short videos (between 2 and 5 minutes in length) that introduce or summarise an aspect of your research. Your recorded video could discuss:
o Recent research findings
o An emerging research idea or interest
o A new or upcoming research output, publication, creative work, etc.
o Research methodology
o Approaches to teaching
o Uses of digital technologies within academia
This format has been deliberately designed to require limited preparation, so is ideal for postgraduates, early career researchers, those with caring responsibilities, or other commitments. You can view examples of digital shorts on the DGRG YouTube channel. For accessibility purposes, please provide a transcript when submitting a digital short so that your video can be accurately subtitled.
Deadline for Abstracts/sessions/digital shorts: April 14 2025, Monday
Notification of Acceptance: April 21 2025, Monday
Symposium Date and Venue: 19-20 June 2025, online
Symposium Organising Committee of DGRG
June Wang, Tess Osborne, Sammia C Poveda Villalba, Adam Packer, Harrison Smith, Sam Kinsley, Olivia Fletcher
Submissions and Inquiries:
Please submit your abstract to the link below:
https://qualtricsxmn4sh2rv6f.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_9YuL5yhVu5fhhyK
Please send questions to June.wang@cityu.edu.hk
References:
Adey, P. (2010). Vertical security in the megacity: Legibility, mobility and aerial politics.Theory, Culture & Society, 27(6), 51–67. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276410380943
Atkins, E. (2021). Tracing the ‘cloud’: Emergent political geographies of global data centres.Political Geography, 86. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2020.102306
Barabasi, A.-L. (2002). Linked: The New Science of Networks. Perseus Publishing.
Datta, A. (2024). The informational periphery: Territory, logistics and people in the margins of a digital age. Asian Geographer, 41(2), 125–142. https://doi.org/10.1080/10225706.2023.2253233
Fraser, A. (2019). Curating digital geographies in an era of data colonialism. Geoforum, 104, 193–200. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2019.04.027
Glasze, G., Cattaruzza, A., Douzet, F., Dammann, F., Bertran, M.-G., Bômont, C., Braun, M., Danet, D., Desforges, A., Géry, A., Grumbach, S., Hummel, P., Limonier, K., Münßinger, M., Nicolai, F., Pétiniaud, L., Winkler, J., & Zanin, C. (2022). Contested Spatialities of Digital Sovereignty. Geopolitics, 1–40. https://doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2022.2050070
Graham, S. (1998). The end of geography or the explosion of place? Conceptualizing space, place and information technology. Progress in Human Geography, 22(2), 165–185.
Gregory, D. (2011). From a View to a Kill: Drones and Late Modern War. Theory, Culture & Society, 28(7–8), 188–215. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276411423027
Jackman, A., & Brickell, K. (2021). ‘Everyday droning’: Towards a feminist geopolitics of the drone-home. Progress in Human Geography, 030913252110187. https://doi.org/10.1177/03091325211018745
Lambach, D. (2020). The Territorialization of Cyberspace*. International Studies Review, 22(3), 482–506. https://doi.org/10.1093/isr/viz022
Latour, B. (2011). Networks, Societies, Spheres: Reflections of an Actor-Network Theorist.
Latour, B., Camacho-Hübner, E., & Novembre, V. (2010). Entering a risky territory: Space in the age of digital navigation. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 28, 581–599.
Lehdonvirta, V. (2022). Cloud Empires: How Digital Platforms Are Overtaking the State and How We Can Regain Control. The MIT Press.
Leszczynski, A. (2012). Situating the geoweb in political economy. Progress in Human Geography, 36(1), 72–89. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132511411231
Luque-Ayala, A., & Neves Maia, F. (2018). Digital territories: Google maps as a political technique in the re-making of urban informality. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 37(3), 449–467. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263775818766069
Möllers, N. (2021). Making Digital Territory: Cybersecurity, Techno-nationalism, and the Moral Boundaries of the State. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 46(1), 112–138. https://doi.org/10.1177/0162243920904436
Mouton, M., & Burns, R. (2021). (Digital) neo-colonialism in the smart city. Regional Studies, 55(12), 1890–1901. https://doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2021.1915974
Mueller, M. (2017). 2017. Will the Internet Fragment? Sovereignty, Globalization and Cyberspace. Cambridge: Polity Press. Polity Press.
Munn, L. (2023). Technical Territories: Data, Subjects, and Spaces in Infrastructural Asia. University of Michigan Press. https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.12584902
Schindler, S., Dicarlo, J., & Paudel, D. (2021). The new cold war and the rise of the 21st‐century infrastructure state. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers. https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12480
Tait, M. M., Dos Reis Peron, A. E., & Suárez, M. (2022). Terrestrial politics and body-territory: Two concepts to make sense of digital colonialism in Latin America. Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society, 5(1), 2090485. https://doi.org/10.1080/25729861.2022.2090485
Van Dijck, J. (2021). Seeing the forest for the trees: Visualizing platformization and its governance. New Media & Society, 23(9), 2801–2819. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444820940293
van Dijck, J., Poell Thomas, & de Waal, M. (2018). The platform society: Public values in a connective world. Oxford University Press.
Wang, J., & Tomassetti, J. (2024). Labor-capital relations on digital platforms: Organization, algorithmic discipline and the social factory again. Sociology Compass, 18(3), e13192. https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.13192
Woods, O., Bunnell, T., & Kong, L. (2024). Territorialising the cloud or clouding the territory? Volumetric vulnerabilities and the militarised conjunctures of Singapore’s smart city-state. Political Geography, 115, 103211. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2024.103211
Yao, C., & Wang, J. (2024). The deep interface of the effectuated voluminous territories: Gates, smooth and striated spaces, and the royal science in the Air Silk Road. Territory, Politics, Governance, 12(1), 153–169. https://doi.org/10.1080/21622671.2022.2150286
Yebra López, C. (2021). The Digital (De)territorialization of Ladino in the Twenty-First Century. WORD, 67(1), 94–116. https://doi.org/10.1080/00437956.2021.1880065
Zhang, C., & Morris, C. (2023). Borders, bordering and sovereignty in digital space. Territory, Politics, Governance, 11(6), 1051–1058. https://doi.org/10.1080/21622671.2023.2216737
No comments:
Post a Comment