[csaa-forum] STEP 2008 - Call for Participation

[Reena Dobson]

Dear All,

 

A friendly reminder that there are still limited places available for participation in STEP 2008

 

Applications to participate in the forum close on September 1st 2008 - so get them in quick to secure your spot! 

 

________________________________

 

STEP 2008 CALL FOR PARTICIPATION 

Science, Technology and Economic Progress 

Theme 2008: Technological Rhythms, Socio-Cultural Change 

National Doctoral Program: 30 November to 5 December 2008 

Invitation to PhD students 

The 2008 Science, Technology and Economic Progress (STEP) forum for PhD students will be hosted by the University of Western Sydney at its Parramatta Campus from 30 November to 5 December, 2008. 

STEP is an annual, multi-disciplinary, national program to assist higher degree research students to think about their own topics in a wider way, by ‘looking over the fence’ into what other disciplines have to offer. Hosting of STEP has been shared between universities around Australia over the past 17 years. 

Each year STEP is conducted around a theme. STEP 2008 has the theme, ‘Technological Rhythms, Socio-Cultural Change’, and will ask, what is the relation of technology to socio-cultural change? The program will confront this question drawing on approaches from a wide disciplinary range. Posing this question in terms of technological rhythms means moving beyond a deterministic scheme in which technological advance is understood as the mere cause of socio-cultural change (or vice versa). Rhythms are necessarily relational and, while unfolding over time, imply complex patterns of repetition and interference that are not reducible to mechanical models of social progress or historical transition. Rhythms inhere in lived experience but also have an objective existence that can be measured and studied from various angles. The analysis of the relations between technological rhythms and socio-cultural change thus resists a neat separation of the poetic from the scientific. 

PhD students from across disciplines are invited to participate in STEP 2008 which will bring together a mixed group of high quality PhD students: mixed in terms of discipline, topics, stage of their research, and home universities. Students from the social sciences, humanities, science and engineering, education and information technologies are encouraged to attend. Participants will not be selected on the basis of special interest in the 'theme', but rather the theme has been selected to push students to cross disciplinary boundaries and see their own work in a different light. 

Participation is limited to 25 places. During STEP all students will be expected to make a presentation on their own research and to engage actively in the sessions. 

There is no registration charge and accommodation for the week will be provided for the participants in UWS housing. In special cases some travel assistance will be considered. Academics from several universities attend STEP to provide mentoring and leadership to the students. In 2008, the coordinator will be Dr Don Lamberton, Adjunct Professor, Griffith University Business School and General Editor, Prometheus, and he will be supported by a multi-disciplinary team of distinguished academics from UWS and other universities. 

Interested participants are requested to forward a curriculum vitae no later than 1st September 2008 outlining the following: 

􀂃 Details of their PhD research, indicating progress to date; 

􀂃 Academic record; 

􀂃 Any previous work history; and 

􀂃 Nomination of two referees (with e-mail addresses). 

 

Applications should be sent electronically to Carolyn Love: c.love at uws.edu.au and copied to Dr Don Lamberton: d.lamberton at griffith.edu.au  

 

Please help by bringing this Call to the notice of any potential participants. 

 

Hosted by the School of Economics and Finance, the Centre for Cultural Research, and the School of Social Sciences at the University of Western Sydney 

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