Brussels, 28-30 April 2011

Palais des Académies
Académie royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique
Rue Ducale 1, 1000 Bruxelles

This symposium aims to confront empirical research, its work methods and ethical commitments, when it takes on the study of elites in the city. The speakers will analyse the methods influential groups use or have used to shape the city. These methods include coalitions, technical/legal inventions, academic know-how and professional expertise, lobbying, residential strongholds, and many more. The symposium is thus intended to stimulate debate on the production of urban space and its enmeshed power relations, today and in the past, as well as to explore the fieldwork done in order to tackle theses issues.

more information here

SURF – The Centre for Sustainable Urban and Regional Futures

Applications must be received no later than 5.00pm on 20th May 2011
The successful candidate is expected to register in June 2011 or as soon as possible thereafter.

For further information and informal enquiries please contact Dr Mike Hodson m.hodson@salford.ac.uk or Professor Tim May t.may@salford.ac.uk – or by telephone: (0161) 295 4018.

A one-day conference presented by:

Centre for Cultural Studies Research, University of East London Faculty of Social Sciences, Open University Media Industries Research Centre, University of Leeds

May 20th 2011
11:00 – 18:00
University of East London
Docklands Campus
Room EB.2.43

Can music change anything, or does its potency lie merely in its exemplary status as an organised human activity? What are the effects of power relations on music and to what extent is music itself a site at which power relations can be reinforced, challenged or subverted? What are the economic, affective, corporeal or ideological mechanisms through which these processes occur? Has the age of recorded music as a potent social force now passed, a relic of the twentieth century; or with the music industry in crisis, is music culture in fact the first post-capitalist sector of the cultural economy, only now emerging from the long shadow of the culture industry? What historical or contemporary examples can we draw on to address some or all of these questions?

This conference is programmed by Jeremy Gilbert (Centre for Cultural Studies Research, University of East London), David Hesmondhalgh (Media Industries Research Centre, Institute of Communications Studies) and Jason Toynbee (Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change, Open University).

The conference is free to attend, but pre-registration is recommended.
To register email j.gilbert@uel.ac.uk with the subject “Music, Politics and Agency Registration”
For any further information, email j.gilbert@uel.ac.uk

Venue: Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), Lisbon
11 October 2011 – 14 October 2011

Four years after the first meeting, the Second International Conference of Young Urban Researchers provides continuity to the experience of interdisciplinary meeting of young urban researchers.

The conference aims to share recent researches on urban contexts from many different areas of social sciences, to discuss current theoretical and methodological issues and to promote interdisciplinary and international networking. It is intended that the meeting should be boosted by young researchers who work in urban studies and develop research in the cities – especially those who are studying in post-graduate programs but also those carrying out technical and intervention activities.

http://conferencias.cies.iscte.pt/index.php/icyurb/sicyurb

Dear All,

I am pleased to have the opportunity to invite you to the Manchester EPIC project workshop on Tuesday 29th March 2011, here at MDDA Offices.

‘The EPIC platform will combine the industrial strengths of IBM’s ‘Smart City’ vision and cloud computing infrastructure with the knowledge and expertise of leading European Living Labs… to ensure the development of a European ‘innovation ecosystem’ for sustainable user-driven web-based services for citizens and businesses.’ (EPIC, 2010)

The purpose of the workshop is to communicate the SMART City concept and demonstrate the Manchester EPIC pilot, energyhive, to a representative stakeholder community from the City.

energyhive is an energy monitoring product, which allows users to view the household’s energy consumption via a web-based dashboard. The product collates household data at regular intervals via a number of energy monitoring units from within the home, this data can then be stored on a cloud-based storage system.

The workshop will allow the EPIC team to highlight the environmental and technological benefits of using cloud-based approaches to support sustainable web-based services and products.

see more here

Welcome to 2011 Spaces and Flows: An International Conference on Urban and ExtraUrban Studies. The conference will be held at the Monash University Prato Centre, Prato, Italy from 17-18 November 2011.

This conference aims to critically engage the contemporary and ongoing spatial, social, ideological, and political transformations in a transnational, global, and neoliberal world. In a process-oriented world of flows and movement, we posit, the global north and global south now simultaneously converge and diverse in a dialectic that shapes and transforms cities, suburbs, and rural areas. This conference addresses the mapping of, the nature of, and the forces that propel these processural changes.

Read More

A JOINT EDF DIVERSITERRE FOUNDATION/CITY ON THE MOVE INSTITUTE EXHIBITION

What are the major challenges facing urbanism today? What new compromises does it need to make? How can individual desires – for space, urban intensity and nature, access to all the resources of the city – be reconciled with the demands of sustainability? Going to the heart of the public debate and of our concerns as citizens, this exhibition was first presented at the EDF Diversiterre Foundation in Paris in October 2009/March 2010, then in Mulhouse in October 2010/February 2011 and will be at Espace Bazacle in Toulouse from March 30 to June 12, 2011. Read More

The conference will be held at Manchester Metropolitan University – where the GSA was first established in 2000 – in conjunction with the Department of Sociology.

Two of our keynote speakers have already been arranged. They are:
Professor Richard Giulianotti, Durham University who has written extensively on globalization and sport, especially football, and Professor Peggy Levitt, Wellesley College, Boston, USA, who has published extensively on transnational migrants.

In addition we invite scholars, postgraduates and other interested and informed lay-persons to submit abstracts by May 31st, 2011. We also hope to publish one or more books consisting of the most interesting readings drawn from the conference. Read More