Spaces and Flows Conference 2011

by: Robert Grimm - March 22nd, 2011  

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.

We invite prospective participants to submit a presentation proposal for one of the following parallel session options: a 30-minute paper; a 60-minute workshop; a jointly presented 90-minute colloquium session; or a virtual session. We also encourage innovative presentation formats, such as roundtables, staged dialogues, screenings and performances. Parallel sessions are loosely grouped into streams reflecting different perspectives or disciplines. Each stream forms a talking circle, an informal forum for focused discussion of issues and conference themes.

Participants may choose to submit written papers before or after the conference for possible publication in the peer reviewed Spaces and Flows: An International Conference on Urban and ExtraUrban Studies. Virtual participants also have the option to submit papers for consideration by the journal. All registered conference participants receive a complimentary online subscription to the journal when registration is finalised. This subscription is valid until one year after the conference end-date.

If you would like to know more about this conference, bookmark the Spaces and Flows Conference website and return for further information and regular updates. You may also wish to subscribe to ‘The Image’, the Newsletter of the conference and journal.

For all inquiries, please contact the Conference Secretariat.

About: Robert Grimm

All over Europe, cities are faced with the challenge of using cultural resources to re-position their city in an increasingly culturally and economically diversified European space. Related to this is a clear recognition of the growing importance of cultural resources for economic and community development. This produces new opportunities and challenges for local cultural planning and management. In order to fully exploit the innovative and supportive role of culture in European urban development, it will be necessary to develop a new socially and culturally sensitive professionalism, able to cross the boundaries between the arts, design, urban and spatial planning, public policy and the market, artistic creativity and cultural management. The MA in European Urban Cultures offers a specialist programme aimed at graduate students from Europe and elsewhere with undergraduate degrees in subject areas such as the social sciences; cultural and leisure studies; art, design and architecture; urban theory and planning; cultural marketing and management. The course is also targeted at professionals and administrators eager for the latest experiences, ideas and insights in urban cultural policy.