The exercise is thought as a prepartory experience for a scientific symposium planned for October/November 2021 on the theme "Social Infrastructures in Cities in Crises". The organization committe Anna-Theresa Renner, Sabine Knierbein, Simon Güntner and Marie Glaser would like to invite students to co-produce the symposium by engaging in the development of the conference outline, choice of subthemes and keynote speakers and by actively selecting the abstracts and thereby defining the programme. Efforts will also be invested in the graphic representation of the event and disseminating the call for participation among interested publics, particularly advanced master students and in general doctoral students.
The term infrastructure is often associated with streets, railroads and other physical or non-physical networks enabling transportation of economic goods, but also services including power supply and telecommunication. These infrastructures are mostly aiming at enabling or increasing economic productivity and efficiency, albeit also being utilized for welfare enhancing activities. Social infrastructure on the other hand, explicitly aims at increasing the quality of life of all people by targeting health, social wellbeing, social cohesion and equality of opportunity in a society. It therefore includes health, education and social services as well as housing and common spaces. While these are often deemed critical in times of global but also personal crisis, social infrastructure itself is also vulnerable to exogenous influences. The latter became apparent when austerity measures following the economic crisis led to a cut in social budgets in many western countries, at the same time increasing the need for social infrastructure. Other global crises that challenge societies’ resilience and sustainability are the most recent pandemic but also ongoing climate change and the aging of society. The impact of these, and therefore the reliance on social infrastructure, differs amongst different socio-demographic and -economic groups.
During this course, the following questions will be discussed:
HOW DOES A SYMPOSIUM COME INTO BEING?
HOW DO TOPICS COME INTO BEING?
WHAT TYPE OF SYMPOSIA DO YOU KNOW?
WHICH DIFFERENT FORMATS WITHIN A SYMPOSIUM DO YOU KNOW?
HOW DO E-SYMPOSIUMS DIFFER FROM SMALLER FACE-TO-FACE CONFERENCES ?
WHAT ARE THE SKILLS YOU THINK YOU WOULD LIKE TO CONTRIBUTE?
WHAT ARE THE SKILLS YOU WOULD LIKE TO LEARN?
WHAT ARE THE SKILLS THE TEACHING TEAM WOULD LIKE TO CONVEY?
DO YOU ALREADY FREQUENT SCIENTIFIC CONFERENCES?
WHAT TYPE OF CONFERENCES DO YOU LIKE?
Conference design
- setting a thematic agenda
- defining the facts and figures (date, budget, space, scope)
- conference culture and style in interdisciplinary environments
- defining and negotiating roles (who participates, who is addressed, who organizes, how?)
- organizing additional budgets
- conference communication
- conference documentation
- finishing conference preparations
- conference trouble shooting (aporiae, pitfalls, chaos/ public attention is on you)
- side programme, dealing with multiple expectations
- conference starts
- conference finishes
- post conference work
- budgetary/scientific and further documentation
