Thursday 5 September, 9.00am - 4.30pm, Jubilee Conference Centre, University of Nottingham, NG7 2TU

The (Digital) Space/Place/Identity within Interdisciplinary Research workshop aims to investigate the concepts of "space", "place" and "identity": How they are being defined, used, contested and reappropriated through digital technology.

Physical and virtual spaces and places are almost exclusively mediated through technology owned by governmental and commercial entities -- often in a very centralised, private manner (Moss, 2002; Von Tunzelmann 2003). This proliferation of privately-owned public space/place (Németh et al., 2011) creates a scarcity of spaces free of implicit and/or explicit control: This circumstance leads to an un-critical perpetuation of structures that underlie those governmental and commercial forces. Lived experiences are at risk to be homogenised and normalised. This is increasingly relevant in a technologically driven world: As demonstrated by Conway's law which states that the social structures of companies often result in software that echoes them (MacCormack et al., 2012). By proxy how we organise and interact in existing places may influence how we create new ones.

Identity is the way we view ourselves and how others view us (Giddens, 1991). It is reflexive, fluid and deeply situated in social and physical contexts, shaping our behaviour, relationships, and opportunities in the world and more (Falk, 2009). Therefore, identity is fundamental to the way we experience, understand and interact with the world around us; the places we inhabit and the people with which we inhabit them. Examining the embedded imbalance of existing structures, their impact on the identity of inhabitants, and exploring the affordances of technology from a multitude of disciplinary perspectives, provides a way to understand potential futures for these three vital aspects of lived experience.