Dear colleagues,
 
For those based in London we would like to invite you to a workshop and public talk: “Timescapes of Urban Change: Barcelona and London – a regeneration comparison” on the 29th of November at 2pm at UCL. The public event following will also be live-streamed on the day from 18.30. 
 
For those interested in attending the workshop please register or book tickets for the evening talk (details below), as limited seats are available.
 
best wishes
Victoria Habermehl
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The aim of the workshop is to bring together urban professionals and academics to discuss in depth the ways in which time and temporal dimensions shape, affect and influence the planning, building and life of urban environments. Our ‘case’ studies will be Tower Hamlets, London, and el Raval, Barcelona. Speakers will evaluate and contrast how temporal considerations have affected their urban regeneration. This will be followed by discussion groups and general debate. 
The workshop will be followed by a public panel discussion which will take a broader view and analysis of the urban redevelopment of Barcelona and London. 
 
WORKSHOP INFORMATION:
Some of the questions the events will address are: How do temporal considerations (investment cycles, deadlines, changing global and local politics) affect the planning and construction of buildings and cities? What kinds of times are fostered or eliminated in the landscape of urban regeneration projects? How do different temporal narratives, practices and ideologies converge or conflict to produce a particular sense of place? What is the relationship between neoliberal time and urban planning? Which lessons can be learned from the regeneration processes in both cities?
 
Speakers: Simone Abram (Durham University), Bob Allies (Allies and Morrison Architects), Nuria Benach Rovira (Barcelona University), Clare Colomb (Bartlett, UCL), Monica Degen (Brunel University), Mari Paz Balibrea (Birbeck), Carme Gual Via (Barcelona City Council), Chris Horton (Tower Malets Council), Isaac Marrero Guillamon (Goldsmith College), Euan Mills (Future Cities Catapult), Mike Raco (UCL).
 
If you would like to attend the workshop please RSVP by Monday 21st of November as places are limited. The panel discussion is open to everyone but needs to be booked via Eventbrite.
 
To attend the workshop please RSVP: [email protected] by the 21st Of November 2016. 
 
Workshop Date: 29th of November @ 2pm prompt, followed by public event at 18:30
 
Panel discussion RSVP or watch live: urbantimescapes.eventbrite.co.uk
 
Organiser: Monica Degen, Brunel University London, British Academy Mid-Career Fellow: www.sensescitiescultures.com www.sensorycities.com

Call for Papers: Nordic Geographers Meeting (NGM2017) (Stockholm, Sweden: June 18th - 21st 2017)

Session title: Geographies of inequality, time and hardship: yesterday, today, tomorrow

Convenors: Helen Holmes and Sarah Marie Hall (University of Manchester, UK)

About the session
This session will explore the geographies and temporalities of inequality and hardship.  Contemporary studies of inequality, particularly around the geographies of austerity and hardship, are very much focused on the urgency of ‘today’s’ issues.  Food and fuel poverty, the impact of economic crises, rates of joblessness and precarious employment, housing and city living, to name but a few, are discussed through rhetoric concerned with the here and now; a prevailing politics of the present. Coupled with the dominant discourse of austerity, and its associated political ideology of frugality and restraint, the geographies of inequality are positioned within a particular time and space.  

This session aims to open up these debates, engaging with a broader temporal and spatial perspective.  In doing so, we firstly wish to focus on the notion of 'hardship', a term that we find usefully encapsulates a wide array of personally and socially affective experiences, including and beyond the economic. Secondly, we propose a broader temporality to exploring this field.  Thinking through the fluid categories of past, present and future we want this session to capture the breadth of temporalities and how they function within the geographies of inequality. These could be memories and stories of a time gone by, or imagined temporalities of the future.  Likewise they may reveal the rhythms, frequencies and tempos of the geographies of hardship, time speeding up or slowing down, or they may capture the bundling of space-time – work, leisure, gender.

We invite papers/contributions that engage with the temporalities and geographies of hardship through a focus on, though not limited to:

- Work (paid, unpaid, divisions of labour)
- Gender relations
- Materiality/material culture
- Methods for researching temporal geographies 
- Social practices
- Social, political or economic exclusion
- Alternative and diverse economies
- The life course
- Caringscapes


Please submit abstracts (no longer than 300 words) by December 10th 2016 to:
Helen Holmes ([email protected]) and Sarah Marie Hall ([email protected])

Call for Papers
CRCC symposium on Media and Time
Loughborough, UK, 15-16 June 2017
 
We are inviting applications for a symposium on Media and Time, organised by Loughborough University’s Centre for Research in Communication and Culture, due to take place in Loughborough on 15-16 June 2017. 
 
Confirmed keynote speakers:
Professor Deborah Chambers, Newcastle University, UK
Professor Paddy Scannell, University of Michigan, USA
 
Media and communication technologies are inextricably bound up with the passage of time. Different forms and genres of mediated communication shape our sense of time in different ways, structure our daily routines, invite us to join in festive occasions, and help us manage the unexpected. They offer narratives and images of the past, contribute to the formation of collective memories, and help us imagine the future. Media are also themselves subjected to the passage of time: established forms of communication are unsettled by new technologies, as well as by the economic, political and cultural changes occurring in the society at large. Finally, media old and new play an important role in both furthering social change and reproducing the status quo, a fact that only becomes fully apparent once we study the media over a longer stretch of time.
 
Despite the ubiquitous presence of time in mediated communication, the relationship between the two has so far received only sporadic attention, and is often discussed across different disciplinary field and subfields. This two-day symposium seeks to bring together scholars from diverse disciplinary backgrounds to discuss selected aspects of the relationship between media and time. The event will be organised around three key themes, each addressing a set of related questions:
 
·         Theme 1: The challenges of temporal comparison: While comparative media research typically engages with spatially defined units, it is also possible to apply comparison diachronically, across different points in time. What challenges are brought by shifting from a synchronic to a diachronic plane of comparison, and what are the possible solutions to them?
·         Theme 2: Times of memory, times of media: Remembering and mediation are of necessity time-bound practices, yet so far we know rather little about how the temporalities of memory and media interact. Does, for instance, the temporal organisation of mnemonic practices change depending on the temporality of the media form used? How do new technologies, both historically and today, impact on the perceptions of time passing and subsequently also on the way we remember past events?
·         Theme 3: The temporalities of media history: Engaging in historical research inevitably involves dealing with temporally bound phenomena, but the temporal character of historical developments in media is rarely explicitly reflected upon. What can be gained by paying more explicit attention to issues of temporality, such as periodization, the differing pace of historical change, or the relationships between simultaneous vs. successive developments? 
 
Convenors: Melodee Beals, Ele Belfiore, Emily Keightley, Thoralf Klein, Sabina Mihelj, Simone Natale, Alena Pfoser, James Stanyer and Peter Yeandle.
 
Please submit a c. 250 words abstract with a brief bio to Emily keightley ([email protected]) and Peter Yeandle ([email protected]) by Monday 12 December 2016.
 
Participants will be asked to contribute a small fee to cover meals and related expenses (up to £50, with a discount for PhD students and participants from low-income countries).