Knowledge, Medialities and Information Infrastructures: New Convivialities? Old Inequalities?

La Plata, 21st – 23rd June 2023

The Mecila Thematic Workshop “Knowledge, Medialities and Information Infrastructures: New Convivialities? Old Inequalities?” organized by the Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut, Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz and the Instituto de Investigaciones en Humanidades y Ciencias Sociales (IdHICS/Conicet, Universidad Nacional de La Plata) within the framework of the Research Area “Medialities of Conviviality” of Mecila will take place in La Plata (Argentina).

Participants of the institutions of the Mecila consortium, as well as key local and international guests, will discuss the link between knowledge, medialities and information infrastructures, taking into account convivial contexts marked by difference and inequality. The first thematic focus of the workshop is the transnational production and circulation of knowledge, emphasizing innovative infrastructures and more inclusive cooperation strategies. After an introductory panel to the Mecila consortium and the research area “Medialities of Conviviality”, the second panel will address the contribution of international projects to develop more diverse and symmetrical cooperation, which articulate different perspectives and reduce persistent inequalities. One of the strategic resources in the geopolitics of knowledge is research data. For this reason, the third panel will analyze management and open access strategies, making reference to multimedia, the diversity of scientific practices, institutional instabilities, and the challenges of scientific policies.

The second focus of the Thematic Workshop is dedicated to the contexts of conviviality and inequalities that make up Latin American intellectual networks. Two interdisciplinary panels will be discussed on the interconnections between publishing economies and translation, analyzing these practices as spaces for negotiation and dispute, both in local and transregional contexts and from a multidirectional perspective, attending to strategies in local and international, hegemonic and alternative circuits. The third thematic focus is dedicated to different aspects of the management, use, and development of information infrastructures as convivial spaces, marked by diversity and inequalities. The discussion will address the impacts of the digital transformation that allows new access to collections, but also perpetuates inequalities or creates new ones.

The three planned visits to the Comisión Provincial por la Memoria, the Museo de La Plata/Facultad de Ciencias Naturales and the Y-TEC innovation pole complement the logic of the panels with presentations, comments and debates. They will make it possible to deepen the themes of the panels from a practical and institutional perspective. The nomadic character of the Thematic Workshop has the objective of articulating Mecila with different institutional spaces and academic networks that are relevant to the project.

Link to the program, here.