Knowledge Infrastructures and Digital Governance. History, Challenges, Practices
This workshop aims at revisiting digital knowledge infrastructures from an organisational and governance perspective, through their history, their stakes and achievements, as well as their challenges and obstacles. It will explore how these infrastructures frame themselves, evolve and adapt, how they stimulate participation and implement innovative models of governance (e.g. Wikipedia) as well as how they create a shared culture and common values, how they sustain knowledge commons and may contribute to a new epistemology and scientific environment.
How to balance the needs to ensure efficiency and reliability with the capacity to be open to new models of governance, including those who have emerged from the digital environment? How to meet the rising needs of players to cooperate on the basis of personal autonomy, flexibility and opportunity, rather than exclusively on hierarchy and formalism? Acting at the interface of several communities, what governance tools, forms and means of action have digital knowledge employed so far and which ones could they further use in order to satisfy their role of intermediaries, mediators and facilitators within complex environments?
Relevant topics may include but are not limited to:
- History of digital knowledge infrastructures
- History, evolution and analysis of specific concepts such as accountability in governance, liquid democracy, etc., as well as proposals to go beyond these existing models
- Critical review of innovative modes of governance in distributed organisations or/and in the digital area
- Field studies of innovative governance in chosen public and private organisations and their practices
- Field studies of innovative governance in creating and maintaining knowledge commons
- Critical testimonies on the implementation or experiments with new modes of governance
- Presentation and analysis of online decision-making tools (wiki, blockchain, e-voting, etc.)
- Prospective outlook on the governance of knowledge and research infrastructures
The workshop will combine formal presentations with more participatory collective brainstorming sessions. It is open to the academic world (digital humanities, history, management and administration sciences, computer science, information and communication sciences, media studies, etc.), to the world of culture, libraries, archives, publishing, but also widely to the players in the free software movement as well as to the private sector (whether participants are confronted with new forms of governance (such as holacracy), suppliers of software solutions related to the challenges of digital governance or involved in the implementation of new modes of governance in their organisations).
Programme committee :
- Janneke Adema (Open Humanities Press, ScholarLed, Coventry University, COPIM)
- Suzanne Dumouchel (OPERAS, Huma-Num, CNRS)
- Pierre Mounier (OPERAS, OpenEdition, EHESS)
- Valérie Schafer (C2DH, University of Luxembourg)
- Lars Wieneke (C2DH, University of Luxembourg)
- Sherri Barnes (UCSB Library, COPIM)
- Cameron Neylon (Centre for Culture and Technology, Curtin University)
Practical Information:
The conference should have been held at the University of Luxembourg. However, adapting to the current situation, we are looking forward to welcoming you remotely in the afternoons of September 7th and 8th, 2020.