A one day interdisciplinary symposium for postgraduate students and new researchers to be held at the British Library Conference Centre on 1 June 2009.
The School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research at The University of Kent and The British Library invite postgraduate students and new researchers to present their work and generate new debate about ‘dangerous’ spaces and the way in which crime and danger are mapped. We would like to offer researchers the opportunity to challenge collectively orthodox understandings about the mapping of ‘danger’ and to draw together interdisciplinary work about how changing perceptions of danger are represented and imagined.
The day will be of interest to criminologists and cultural criminologists, sociologists, urban geographers, psycho-geographers, socio-historians, critical theorists and cultural sociologists as well as those with an interest phenomenology, perception and representation across the disciplines.
The conference will take place at The British Library and will include an introduction to some unusual maps of ‘danger’ that are specific to the collections. An interdisciplinary panel of academics will be invited to speak at the end of the day.
We invite postgraduate and new researchers to submit abstracts of 200 words by Friday 13 March 2009. Joint papers are welcomed.
Possible themes include:
• Ideology/power
• Space and culture
• Mapping cognitively, emotions and the psycho-geography of space
• Mapping liminal spaces
• The ‘civilized’ space
• Literary, fictional and virtual maps
• New ways of reading maps
• Gender, race and ‘danger’
• Issues of surveillance and control
We invite attendees to join us for lunch as well as a networking session at the close of the symposium. A small registration fee of £10 will apply to all participants.
We warmly invite and welcome proposals for themes for parallel sessions or workshops. Please send 200 word abstracts and ideas for themes by Friday 13 March 2009 to conference organisers:
Laura Hanson (ljh29@kent.ac.uk) and Dr. Sarah Evans (sarah.evans@bl.uk)
