The Open University, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA (Michael Young Building, Rooms 2, 3 & 4)
http://www.open.ac.uk/about/main/faculties-centres/milton-keynes-campus
This CCIG forum aims at exploring specific methodological and intellectual challenges for social science research and will be the occasion to introduce one new CCIG research programme: Digital Citizen.
The morning session will be dedicated to the methodological challenges encountered in research led by Jenny Meegan, Philip O’Sullivan and John D'Arcy (OU) that explores, through oral history, the educational experiences of politically motivated former prisoners and The Open University staff and prison education staff who worked with them. These focus on OU education in Maze Long Kesh and Armagh/Maghaberry prisons during the period of conflict in Ireland 1971-2000.
The afternoon session, organised by the Digital Citizen Research programme, will introduce Engin Isin and Evelyn Rupert’s latest book: Being Digital Citizens. Evelyn and Engin will focus on questions of method for investigating digital acts and how digital acts through the Internet cross boundaries and create paradoxical subjects of rights.
All welcome!
Programme
10:30-11:00: Welcome and coffee
11:00-12:30: On ethics and methodology: oral educational histories with Loyalist and Republican ex-prisoners and Open University staff (Jenny Meegan, Philip O’Sullivan and John D'Arcy, OU )
This seminar will focus on the practical and ethical issues in undertaking research by members of an educational institution into its own involvement in education in a sensitive context and a politically divided society. As well as being an oral history of educational journeys and a piece of institutional scholarship, this research raises other issues such as how the researchers and former students are themselves ‘involved’ in the research; how the consent and participation of interviewees in the project was sought and obtained; copyright, data protection, anonymity, how human voices can be heard, issues of discourse and language and finally the ultimate use and purpose of this oral history archive.
These are all live issues currently under consideration as the project moves from data collection and documenting to processing and archiving these oral histories.
The seminar will be led by Jenny Meegan and Philip O’Sullivan, Principal Researchers, both Social Sciences Faculty Staff based in Belfast and will be introduced by John D'Arcy, National Director of The Open University in Ireland
12:30 – 13:30: Lunch break
13:30-15:00: A dialogue on Being Digital Citizens (Engin Isin & Evelyn Ruppert)
In this dialogue, Engin Isin (OU) and Evelyn Ruppert (Goldsmiths) will reflect on the experience of writing their book Being Digital Citizens (Rowman&Littlefield, 2015).
That things we say and do through the Internet have permeated our lives in unprecedented ways is now a cliché that needs not repeating. That this has happened practically throughout the world, despite a digital divide is also accepted. That both corporations and states have become heavily invested in harvesting, assembling and storing data – for profits or security – about things we say and do through the Internet is practically the strongest evidence of the significance attached to our connected digital lives. That for many people Aaron Swartz, Anonymous, DDoS, Edward Snowden, GCHQ, Julian Assange, LulzSec, NSA, Pirate Bay, PRISM or WikiLeaks hardly require introduction is yet further evidence. That presidents and footballers tweet, hackers leak nude photos, and murderers and advertisers use Facebook or that people post their sex acts are not so controversial as just recognizable events of our times. That Airbnb disrupts the hospitality industry or Uber the taxi industry is taken for granted. It certainly feels like saying and doing things through the Internet has become an everyday experience with dangerous possibilities. If indeed what we are saying and doing through the Internet is dramatically changing political life, what then of the subjects of politics? If the Internet – or more precisely how we are increasingly acting through the Internet – is changing our political subjectivity, what do we think about the way in which we understand ourselves as political subjects, subjects who have rights to speech, access, and privacy, rights that constitute us as political, as beings with responsibilities and obligations?
Registration is now closed.
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 CCIG FORUM 12 May Programme.pdf | 114.99 KB |
