2nd International Workshop on Socio-gerontechnology. Unsettling technogenarians

Program

After its 2017 inaugural meeting in Vienna, this is the second workshop of the Socio-gerontechnology network that explores themes at the intersection of STS and Age Studies. The aims of the Barcelona meeting are to bring together scholars working in this and related areas, discuss recent developments in the field, and further build the network. There will be ample room to discuss papers.

The concept “technogenarian” is proposed by Joyce and Loe (2010) to bring to the fore aspects of the ageing experience that usually remain concealed by structural ageism: older people are not only the beneficiaries or dupers of science and technologies but they create, use, and adapt technologies to negotiate in every dimension of their daily life. The existence of the technogenarians signals a research domain at the crossroad of Science and Technology Studies and Ageing Studies that is currently under explored. However, as Joyce and Loe (2010) acknowledge, the technogenarians are usually the “economically privileged baby boomers” that seem to better enact the successful and active ageing core values. By unsettling technogenarians, we are sending an invitation to social science scholars to further explore this interstitial domain between STS and Ageing Studies in order to address questions such as: what are the critical consequences of science and technological innovations in the life of older people, what forms of “being old” or social groups are left aside, co-opted, or normalized in the design and implementation of new technologies for active ageing. In sum, we would like to explore what happens to Age Studies and STS if rather than greying the cyborg we try to cyborg the grey.

Please see the programme of the workshop here.

Organizers: Daniel López (CareNet - IN3/UOC), Roser Beneito-Montagut (CareNet - IN3/UOC & Cardiff University), Lluvi Farré (CareNet - IN3/UOC), Andrea García Santesmases (CareNet - IN3/UOC), Arantza Begueria (Siegen University) and Mireia Fernández-Ardèvol (CNSC - IN3/UOC) with the support of two and IN3/UOC research groups, CareNet and CNSC, and the Network of Socio-Gerontechnology.

This workshop has been funded by The Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3) of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya and the Ageing + Communication + Technologies (ACT) project through a partnership grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).

_{Photo by Tiago Muraro on Unsplash.}