Mobility of Things: Pasts, Presents, and Futures

Questions of mobility and transport studies, historical and contemporary, are in a state of flux. How traditional transport history, for example, may be combined with the growing significance of mobility studies, or how the static landscape of movement (the roads and rails, stations and airports) relate to mobility itself are the source of much exciting research. The movement of people, or restrictions on that movement, is a topic of much contemporary debate; yet equally important notions of the circulation, transport, and mobility of objects, ideas, and cultures remain underrepresented. Furthermore, how museums and galleries, as well as researchers and writers, might capture and record that movement, and explain to broader audiences, continues to pose a challenge.

This two day conference hosted by the National Railway Museum in York (UK) aims to bring together scholars from a wide variety of fields working on issues of mobility and movement in the modern world. The aim is to create a truly interactive conference where speakers and audiences can exchange ideas, build relationships, and debate the differing contexts of moving objects, peoples, and ideas. Applications addressing the theme of “movement of things” in past, present, or future contexts are welcome.

Submissions can be either for 20 minute papers OR for 5 minute “think pieces”

Think Pieces (150 word proposals)

With the aim of stimulating debate and discussion the organisers particularly encourage submissions for small think pieces on the following subjects:

• Diasporas

• Movement and Design

• Big Data, Visualisation and Mobilities (mapping/plotting/researching/etc)

• Representing Movement in Museums.

Conference Papers (300 word proposals)

The organisers also welcome proposals for more traditional 20-minute conference papers (or panels) addressing the conference themes more broadly.

Some ideas of topics that could be covered:

• Colonial/Post-Colonial/Global Movement

• The material history of movement and mobility

• The Mobility of Things in film, television, literature, and drama.

• Cultural and Social reactions to movements and mobilities.

• Telling the stories of object mobilities in Museums and Galleries

• Future imaginings or cultural legacies of the movement of things past and future.

• The materiality of movement.

• The political, economic, or metaphysical contexts of such mobilities.

Proposals and Queries can be sent to the Organisers at nrmconferences@gmail.com

CFP DEADLINE – 31st October 2018

Mobility

For the Mobile Lives Forum, mobility is understood as the process of how individuals travel across distances in order to deploy through time and space the activities that make up their lifestyles. These travel practices are embedded in socio-technical systems, produced by transport and communication industries and techniques, and by normative discourses on these practices, with considerable social, environmental and spatial impacts.

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Movement

Movement is the crossing of space by people, objects, capital, ideas and other information. It is either oriented, and therefore occurs between an origin and one or more destinations, or it is more akin to the idea of simply wandering, with no real origin or destination.

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