Call for Papers: History and Philosophy of Computing (HaPoC) Conference
Submissions are open for the 8th edition of the History and Philosophy of Computing (HaPoC) Conference that will take place on December 17-19, 2025, at RWTH Aachen University (Germany) on behalf of the DHST/DLMPST Commission for the History and Philosophy of Computing (HaPoC).
Important dates:
- Submission deadline: May 25, 2025
- Notification of acceptance/rejection: July 31, 2025
- Conference: December 17-19, 2025
About the conference:
Since 2011, the biennial History and Philosophy of Computing (HaPoC) conference series has contributed to building an interdisciplinary community and environment to address the various facets of computing and computing technology. HaPoC aims to bring together scholars from a broad range of disciplines to discuss the past and present cultures, practices and images of computing.
We welcome contributions from researchers from different disciplinary backgrounds, such as history, philosophy, sociology, computer science and software engineering, cultural and media studies, computational sciences, design and art. We invite contributors to share their expertise in respective areas and openly engage in interdisciplinary discussions. Topics include, but are not limited to:
- Historical and philosophical dimensions of computing practices
- Social and cultural aspects of computing
- Computing and the arts
- New forms of computing, such as neuromorphic computing
- Ethical and legal aspects of computing
- Reflecting and historicizing AI
We look forward to submissions by scholars from all career stages and aim at diversity of participants in terms of demographics that include gender, career stage/track, geographical location, and institutional affiliation.
Find out more on the HaPoC website (with links to past conferences).
Submission procedure:
Please submit to hapoc2025@khk.rwth-aachen.de a 2-page proposal in PDF format containing:
- an anonymized abstract (1 page, ca. 700 words) for double-blind review
- a max. 1-page statement of your name, affiliation, research focus, academic activities and optionally publications (max. 5).
Acceptance notifications will be sent by July 31, 2025.
There are no conference fees and travel grants will be offered to early career scholars, further information will follow.
We look forward to meeting you at HaPoC-8 in Aachen!
Confirmed Keynote Speakers:
Robin K. Hill, University of Wyoming, US
Alexandre Hocquet, Université de Lorraine, France
Liesbeth De Mol, Université de Lille, France
Confirmed Members of the Program Committee:
Arianna Borrelli, TU Berlin and RWTH Aachen, Germany
Jianqing Chen, Washington University at Saint Louis, US
Jack Copeland, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, NZ
Beatrice Fazi, University of Sussex, UK
Gabriele Gramelsberger, RWTH Aachen, Germany
Thomas Haigh, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, US
Andrei Korbut, CAIS Center for Advanced Internet Studies Bochum, Germany
Ben Peters, University of Tulsa, US
Mate Szabo, University of Southern California, US
Local Organising Committee at RWTH Aachen University:
Gabriele Gramelsberger (philosophy of science)
Stefan Böschen (sociology of science)
Dawid Kasprowicz (philosophy of science)
Phillip Roth (science and technology studies)
Saskia Nagel (ethics of science)
Torsten Voigt (science and technology studies)
Find the Call as a pdf document here.
Event Announcement: Workshop “After Networks: Reframing Scale, Reimagining Connections”
We cordially invite you to the interdisciplinary workshop “After Networks: Reframing Scale, Reimagining Connections”, which will take place on April 16 and 17, 2025 at the SuperC of RWTH Aachen University. The event is organized in collaboration with Nathalia Lavigne, who is currently a fellow at the KHK c:o/re.
Abstract
In the last few years, we have witnessed an unprecedented crisis in the way social interactions have merged with the informational space. The current “space of the world”, as the artificial space of social media platforms has been called (Couldry, 2025), is designed and controlled by corporations with strictly business purposes, putting at risk a sense of community in a devastating way. How can the future of the internet be imagined beyond social media platforms? What can we learn from other networks or other notions of space devised by artists? In which ways can digital communication be grounded on equity, common ownership and sustainability? These are some of the questions that will be addressed during the workshop.
The interdisciplinary program, combining art and internet studies, puts together different approaches on how science and technology are configured in other spheres beyond academia. Gathering scholars, artists and activists who have been working on disruptive understanding of digital systems, this two-day event will discuss alternative ways to reimagine connections in contrast to increasingly monopolistic and financially motivated social media platforms.
The workshop includes an opening artist talk with Eduardo Kac, a keynote speech with the media scholar Lori Emerson, who is launching her new book “Other Networks: A Radical Technology Sourcebook” (Anthology Editions, 2025) and a round table focused on a community-centered perspective of networks.
The full program can be found in this document.
If you would like to attend, please register with: events@khk.rwth-aachen.de
Speakers
Tatiana Bazzichelli is the founder and director of the Disruption Network Lab, a non-profit organisation in Berlin that explores the intersection of politics, technology and society (www.disruptionlab.org). Her work focuses on whistleblowing, network culture, art and activism. Since September 2023 she is the director of the Disruption Network Institute: Investigating the Kill Cloud, a new centre for investigation and empirical research into the impact of artificial intelligence on new technologies of war, automated weapons and networked warfare (https://disruption.institute). She is the author of Whistleblowing for Change (2021), Networked Disruption (2013), Disrupting Business (2013) and Networking (2006). She was a member of the Transparency International Anti-Corruption Award Committee 2020. In 2019-2021, she was appointed by the Federal Government and the City of Berlin as a jury member for the Hauptstadtkulturfonds (Capital Cultural Fund), and in 2020-2023 she was a jury member for the Kulturlichter Prize, a new award for digital cultural education in Germany. For three years until 2014, she was a curator at the transmediale art & digital culture festival in Berlin, where she developed the year-round programme reSource transmedial culture Berlin and curated several conferences, workshops and art projects.
Lisa Deml [she/her] is an independent curator and writer based in Berlin. Initially trained as a journalist, she subsequently worked for public institutions and non-profit organisations, including Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW), Berlin; Haus der Kunst, Munich; and Ashkal Alwan, Beirut. Most recently, she curated the exhibition ‘Like Snow in the Middle of Summer’ with works by the Lebanese artist Rabih Mroué as part of Manifesta 15 (Granollers, 2024) and the international symposium ‘After Memory’ in collaboration with Víctor Fancelli Capdevila and Nathalia Lavigne and in partnership with ZKM | Center for Art and Media (Karlsruhe, 2024). As of March 2025, Marie-Sophie Dorsch and her are joint artistic directors of Halle für Kunst Lüneburg e.V.
Lori Emerson is an Associate Professor of Media Studies and Associate Chair of Graduate Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. She is also the Founding Director of the Media Archaeology Lab. Her most recent book is Other Networks: A Radical Technology Sourcebook (Anthology Editions, 2025), now available for pre-order. She is also co-author of The Lab Book: Situated Practices in Media Studies (with Darren Wershler and Jussi Parikka), author of Reading Writing Interfaces, and co-editor of three collections. Her research focuses on uncovering crisis points in past media, or, points at which there was the possibility, never fully realized, for technologies to become “other” than what they are now. Lori Emerson also tries to undo established narratives of how contemporary technologies came to be by looking at artists and writers’ experiments with, for example, network technologies.
Eduardo Kac is internationally recognized for his groundbreaking work in contemporary art and poetry. In the early 1980s, Kac created digital, holographic and online works that anticipated the global culture we live in today, composed of ever-changing information in constant flux. In 1997 the artist coined the term “Bio Art,” igniting the development of this new art form with works such as his transgenic rabbit GFP Bunny (2000) and Natural History of the Enigma (2009), which earned him the Golden Nica, the most prestigious award in the field of media art. GFP Bunny has become a global phenomenon, having been appropriated by major popular culture franchises such as Sherlock, Big Bang Theory and Simpsons, and by writers such as Margaret Atwood and Michael Crichton. In 2017, Kac created Inner Telescope, a work conceived for and realized in outer space with the cooperation of French astronaut Thomas Pesquet. In 2024, Kac’s Ágora flew to deep space aboard the Centaur rocket and is now in a perpetual heliocentric orbit. Kac’s Adsum landed on the Moon in 2025. Kac’s singular and highly influential career spans poetry, performance, drawing, printmaking, photography, artist’s books, early digital and online works, holography, telepresence, bio art, and space art. Read more.
Nathalia Lavigne [she/her] works as an art researcher, writer and curator. Post-doctoral fellow at MAC USP, she has a PhD from FAUUSP (University of São Paulo), with a dissertation entitled “(De) musealizations and practices of countercollecting in instantaneous archives.” During her PhD, she was a visiting researcher at The New School (NYC) and Humboldt Universität zu Berlin. She also has a master’s degree in Critical Theory and Cultural Studies from Birkbeck, University of London. Her research interests involve topics such as social documentation and circulation of images on social networks, cultural criticism, museum and media studies and art and technology. She writes for several art magazines, including Artforum, Contemporary &, ZUM (Instituto Moreira Salles) and Humboldt (Goethe). As a curator, she has held exhibitions such as “Against, Again: Art Under Attack in Brazil” (2020), at Anya and Andrew Shiva Gallery (John Jay College, CUNY, NYC) and “Tactics of Disappearance” (2021), at Paço das Artes (São Paulo). Since July 2024, she is a fellow at the KHK c:o/re.
Geert Lovink is a Dutch media theorist, internet critic and author of Uncanny Networks (2002), Dark Fiber (2002), My First Recession (2003), Zero Comments (2007), Networks Without a Cause (2012), Social Media Abyss (2016), Organization after Social Media (with Ned Rossiter, 2018), Sad by Design (2019) and Stuck on the Platform (2022). He studied political science at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) and received his PhD from the University of Melbourne. In 2004 he founded the Institute of Network Cultures (www.networkcultures.org) at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (HvA). His centre organizes conferences, publications and research networks such as Video Vortex (online video), The Future of Art Criticism and MoneyLab (internet-based revenue models in the arts). Recent projects deal with digital publishing experiments, critical meme research, participatory hybrid events and precarity in the arts. From 2007-2018 he was media theory professor at the European Graduate School. In December 2021 he was appointed Professor of Art and Network Cultures at the UvA Art History Department. The Chair (one day a week) is supported by the HvA. Since early 2022 he is involved in support campaigns for Ukrainian artists, in particular UKRAiNATV, a streaming art studio network, operating out of Krakow.
João C. Magalhães is an Assistant Professor in Media, Politics, and Democracy at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands, and an incoming Senior Lecturer in AI and Trust at the University of Manchester, UK. His work concerns the multiple intersections of platforms and politics. In 2024, he started a 4-year project on the (re)making of content moderation, funded by a Veni grant from the Dutch Research Council.
Alex Wermer-Colan is a co-founder, long-time volunteer, and Executive Director of Philly Community Wireless. A resident of North Philadelphia, Alex has contributed to all facets of Philly Community Wireless’ growth and operations, including conducting installs throughout the coverage area, engaging in community outreach with residents and organizations, training and teaching volunteers and staff, overseeing software and networking infrastructure, and developing policies and fundraising strategies to sustain the organization. In addition to his work with Philly Community Wireless, Alex works as the Academic and Research Director at Temple University Libraries’ Loretta C. Duckworth Scholars Studio, where he supports research and teaching with emerging technologies across the disciplines. Alex holds a PhD in English literature with a focus on critical theory from the City University of University of New York’s Graduate Center. Alex serves as the Managing Editor for the Programming Historian in English, and his writing, translations, and dramaturgical work have in such publications as The Los Angeles Review of Books, New Directions, Harpers, New Criterion, PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, Twentieth Century Literature, The Yearbook of Comparative Literature, dh+lib, Debates in the Digital Humanities, The Journal of Interactive Technology and Pedagogy, Indiana University Press, and Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative.
Bruna Zanolli is a specialist in community-centered connectivity and digital care, grounded in intersectional feminism, social and climate justice, and popular education. With 15+ years of experience and research in community radio, autonomous networks, and local technologies, she works to advance public-interest technologies. Bruna supports community networks in the Global South through the Local Networks project (in collaboration with Rhizomatica and APC) and contributes to Brazil’s telecom regulator Anatel on the Community Networks Committee, advocating for inclusive policies and sustainable funding. A Mozilla Open Web Fellow (2018/19) alumni, Bruna is part of the Transfeminist Digital Care Network and APC’s Feminist Internet Research Network (FIRN). She holds a master’s in Communication and Culture from MediaLab UFRJ and is a dedicated FLOSS enthusiast.
Header Image:
© Illustration of SSTV event “Still Life Alive” (by Carlos Fadon Vicente) which also included “Intercities São Paulo / Pittsburgh” from 1988, organized by the Digital Art Exchange (headed by artist Bruce Breland) [from DAX archives, Carnegie Mellon University, “Intercities Sao Paul-Pittsburgh” Jan. 25, 1988 Letter of May 31 to Breland/Kocher from Matuck FF44].
“[T]here really isn’t a clear distinction between the analog and the digital” – Interview with Lori Emerson
As part of the interdisciplinary workshop “After Networks: Reframing Scale, Reimagining Connections”, which will take place at the SuperC of RWTH Aachen University on April 16 and 17, 2025, media scholar Lori Emerson will come to Aachen and give a keynote speech about her new book “Other Networks: A Radical Technology Sourcebook” (Anthology Editions, 2025). We asked her a few questions in advance to get a better understanding of how she thinks about and works with networks.
Lori Emerson
Lori Emerson is an Associate Professor of Media Studies and Associate Chair of Graduate Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. She is also the Founding Director of the Media Archaeology Lab. Find out more on her website.
In your new book Other Networks: A Radical Technology Sourcebook, you present networks that existed before or outside of the internet, digital as well as analog. What would you say do all of these different models of networks have in common?
Many of the networks in Other Networks began as small experiments by a few individuals that didn’t necessarily have aspirations to make sure these networks had a global reach, or that these networks could not be replicated by other individuals, or that they would overtake every other kind of communication at a distance. More, because of their relative simplicity, most of these networks can be recreated today for small groups of people. My hope is that, along with my colleague Dr. libi striegl who is the Managing Director of the Media Archaeology Lab (the lab I direct and that has supported a lot of the research behind Other Networks), we will continue to create “recipes” for building small “other networks.” We have already published a small pamphlet called Build Your Own Mini FM Transmitter that very clearly and carefully walks people who have no background at all in electronics through the process of making what’s basically a micro-broadcasting station.
Do you have a favorite network example?
I am fond of all the networks in Other Networks! But one particular network I like to talk about is an example of an imaginary network: the pasilalinic-sympathetic compass, also referred to as ‘snail telegraph.’ This network was created by French occultist Jacques-Toussaint Benoît to demonstrate that snails are capable of instantaneously and wirelessly transmitting messages to each other across any distance. Benoît’s theory was that in the course of mating snails exchange so-called “sympathetic fluids” which creates a lifelong telepathic bond which also enables them to communicate with each other. He believed he could induce snails to transmit messages faster and more reliably than by wired telegraph by placing a snail on top of a letter and then, with the prodding of an electric charge, the snail would transmit the letter to another snail placed at some distance. The pasilalinic-sympathetic compass itself consisted of twenty-four different wooden structures containing a zinc bowl, cloth that had been soaked in copper sulphate, and a snail glued to the bottom of the bowl. Benoît unsuccessfully demonstrated the snail telegraph to a journalist from La Presse, Jules Allix, in October 1850.
What is the materiality of a network? In your new book, you separated them into four categories: Wireless, Wired, Hybrid and Imaginary. How was the process of organizing the networks into these different categories? Do you think it helps to visualize how a network can be materialized?
Creating a taxonomy for organizing these other networks was the most challenging part of writing Other Networks and, like any taxonomy, the system I settled on is still far from perfect. It took me many months to come up with a system for organizing networks according to their underlying infrastructure and that didn’t simply replicate historiographic conventions of accounting for technological inventions chronologically or by inventor. In other words, I wanted to underscore that networks emerge, disappear, and re-emerge slightly configured or re-combined over and over again; they also are rarely the work of a single person. More, accounting for networks in terms of chronology or “inventor” usually distracts us from seeing networks as material. Today, despite all the excellent work that has been done to reveal the material underpinnings of the internet (from its undersea cables to cable landing stations etc.), still the vast majority of people don’t know where the internet is, how it works, or where it came from. It might as well be immaterial! By contrast, I wanted to make it clear in Other Networks how, for example, there’s radio in the internet; that radio is part of the electromagnetic spectrum; that, even though we can’t see it, the electromagnetic spectrum is a ubiquitous natural resource; and that we as individuals and as communities can learn how to access this natural resource. Perhaps it’s old fashioned to say so, but I still believe that understanding the materiality of networks and how they work empowers us to build our own networks.
Where do you see the future of networks? In the digital or analog space?
One thing that became clear to me in the course of doing research for Other Networks is that there really isn’t a clear distinction between the analog and the digital like I was taught in graduate school. Telegraph communications that use, for example, morse code and that are transmitted over telegraph or telephone wires are digital in the sense that they are pulses of electricity in much the same way that digital computers use pulses of electricity to indicate 1’s and 0’s. In this sense, I think the future of networks is less about whether they’re analog or digital and more about whether they are built for small, local communities; whether they are cooperatively owned rather than corporate-owned; whether they can be maintained over the long run without resorting to blackboxing; and, finally, whether they have built-in structures to resist surveillance, tracking, and monetization.
Thank you so much for the interview, Lori!
More information about the workshop, the program and registration can be found on this website.
Header photo: Jenna Maurice
Special issue of Cybernetics & Human Knowing out now!
We are happy to share that the special issue of Cybernetics & Human Knowing entitled “(Dis)entangling Cognition, Meaning, Modeling, and Environments” has been published.
The issue is guest edited by Alin Olteanu, Phillip H. Roth, and Gabriele Gramelsberger and includes many contributions from KHK c:o/re staff and fellows.
The foreword, written by Phillip H. Roth and Alin Olteanu, is available on the journal’s website.
International Conference “Cultures of Research”
March 25 to 27, 2025, Forum M, Buchkremerstraße 1-7, 52062 Aachen
The international conference “Cultures of Research” takes stock of the first four years of the fellow program at the Käte Hamburger Kolleg: Cultures of Rearch (c:o/re).
During these years, more than fifty international fellows came to the KHK c:o/re to explore the transformation of research in its many facets. Topics such as the digitalization of science, the growing influence of AI on research practices, the organizational transformations in science, the “engineering of science”, and the historical as well as intercultural comparison of “varieties of science” have been widely discussed.
The conference will focus the discussions on these topics in various panels with current and alumni fellows as well as members of the scientific advisory board of the KHK c:o/re.
A detailed program with all speakers and titles can be found in this document.
Program
| Time | Tuesday, 25th | Wednesday, 26th | Thursday, 27th |
| 09:00-12:00 | Welcome and Introduction | Panel 4 “Digitalisation of Science” Lecture by Franck Varenne | Panel 7 “Expanded STS” & Euregio |
| Panel 1 “Historicizing Science” Lecture by Hans-Jörg Rheinberger | |||
| Lunch | |||
| 13:00-15:30 | Panel 2 “Dealing with Complexity” Lecture by Mary Morgan | Panel 5 “Varieties of Science” Lecture by Alfred Nordmann | Panel 8 “Art and Research” |
| Coffee break | |||
| 16:00-18:00 | Panel 3 “Lifelikeness” | Panel 6 “Freedom of Research” Lectures by Frederik Stjernfelt & Steve Fuller | Departure |
| 18:00-20:00 | Evening Keynote Lecture by Ad Aertsen | Conference Dinner | |
| Reception (finger food) |
Get to know our Fellows: Carsten Reinhardt
Get to know our current fellows and gain an impression of their research. In a new season of short videos, we asked them to introduce themselves, talk about their work at the KHK c:o/re and the research questions that fascinate them.
How do chemical residues shape our understanding of uncertainty in modern society? In this video, Carsten Reinhardt, professor for historical studies of science at the University of Bielefeld, explores the concept of residual uncertainty and how unknown long-term effects of chemicals influence scientific debates and regulatory policies.
Check out our media section or our YouTube channel to have a look at the other videos.
Get to know our Fellows: Elisabeth Röhrlich
Get to know our current fellows and gain an impression of their research. In a new season of short videos, we asked them to introduce themselves, talk about their work at the KHK c:o/re and the research questions that fascinate them.
What lessons can the nuclear age teach us about regulating artificial intelligence? In this video, Elisabeth Röhrlich, associate professor in history at the University of Vienna, introduces her research on critical parallels between the early nuclear age and contemporary debates on AI governance.
Check out our media section or our YouTube channel to have a look at the other videos.
Fellow Publication: International Organizations and the Cold War
We are pleased to announce that the book “International Organizations and the Cold War. Competition, Cooperation, and Convergence” by Sandrine Kott, Eva-Maria Muschik and KHK c:o/re Fellow Elisabeth Röhrlich is now published and available as Open Access.
The post-WWII era was a time of superpower confrontation and antagonistic bloc politics, but it was also a period in which organized internationalism reached its peak as both an ideological value and a political practice. This open access volume explores how international organizations affected the evolution and nature of Cold War rivalries, and how they in turn were shaped by them.
In seeking to understand the role that international organizations have played as sites of confrontation, this volume also highlights their role as spaces for mediation and negotiation, particularly for middle-size powers and colonized or newly decolonized countries. Through multiple perspectives, based on a diverse array of historical sources, the authors collectively explore how international organizations were able to bridge and move beyond the Cold War divide by promoting common causes and shaping common scientific knowledge, communities and practices.
Rather than focusing exclusively on western-dominated institutions within the UN system which have received the most scholarly attention to date, “International Organizations and the Cold War” highlights the role of lesser-known groups such as the Paris-based International Child Center, the Prague-based International Union of Students and historical actors such as Soviet public health experts and Chinese development specialists. In doing so, it asks new questions about the role of international organizations in securing peace and security across the modern world, and their role as negotiator in times of tension and crisis.
Keynote by Hannah Star Rogers at the Materializing Methods Symposium
On February 20, 2025, KHK c:o/re Fellow Hannah Star Rogers will deliver the keynote at the Materializing Methods symposium at Durham University.
Materializing Methods is a one-day symposium hosted by the Discovery Research Platform for Medical Humanities at Durham University, in collaboration with The Cultural Negotiation of Science research group (Northumbria University) and Hannah Star Rogers (Medical Museion, University of Copenhagen).
What can practice-based research tell us about working with disciplinary cultures that are not our own? With a focus on how contemporary art practices engage with expert cultures in health and biomedicine, this symposium foregrounds questions of method, practice and process in relation to interdisciplinary inquiry. Critical art practices are knowledge-producing practices that shape interdisciplinary research agendas.
Photo credit: Molly Renda
If you are interested in participating, please visit the event website.
Get to know our Fellows: Sam Selma Ducourant
Get to know our current fellows and gain an impression of their research. In a new season of short videos, we asked them to introduce themselves, talk about their work at the KHK c:o/re and the research questions that fascinate them.
How does lifelikeness function as a mechanism of control? In this video, Sam Selma Ducourant, who works on the history and philosophy of sciences involved in animal production, discusses her research on the history of battery cages for chicken.
Check out our media section or our YouTube channel to have a look at the other videos.
