{"id":670,"date":"2025-04-07T09:44:03","date_gmt":"2025-04-07T09:44:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/datastories.maynoothuniversity.ie\/?p=670"},"modified":"2025-04-11T07:49:33","modified_gmt":"2025-04-11T07:49:33","slug":"call-for-pappers-special-session-at-4th-digital-geographies-conference-3-4-november-2025-lisbon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/datastories.maynoothuniversity.ie\/?p=670","title":{"rendered":"Call for papers – Special Session at 4th Digital Geographies Conference, 3-4 November 2025, Lisbon."},"content":{"rendered":"

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Data Voids: Understanding Digital Geographies of the Built Environment through Negativity and Refusal<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Session Organisers: Danielle Hynes & Samuel Mutter<\/span><\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Emerging work in cultural geography has called on researchers to consider the (im)potential of \u2018negative\u2019 spaces and affects, asking what can be done with voids, limits and (in)capacities of different kinds (e.g. Bissell et al, 2021). Meanwhile, across media and cultural studies, critical data studies and feminist and political geography there is growing attention to the possibilities of refusal (e.g. James et al., 2023), particularly refusal as a collective and generative response to datafied systems. Both bodies of work are concerned with gaps, absences, silences and negation, though with varied foci and orientations toward action.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Our session seeks to bring these literatures into conversation, with a particular focus on digital data and the built environment.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The governance of built environments is increasingly informed and narrated through digital data \u2013 from \u2018evidence-based\u2019 planning, to the modelling of land\/housing markets, and uses of \u2018proptech\u2019 to facilitate investment or discipline tenants, data seem almost as foundational as bricks and mortar. Yet such data are often characterised by absences, gaps and silences. Such absences prompt initiatives to fix, \u2018free\u2019 and\/or repurpose the data in order to enhance access and transparency. However, recent work problematises transparency as a universal response to data-driven systems, pointing to refusal and data justice as approaches pursuing a structural shift relative to data harms.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The session will seek theoretical and empirical contributions pertaining to questions including, but not limited to:<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n