Knowledge Production in Material Spaces (Disturbing Conferences and Composing Events)

Knowledge Production in Material Spaces is a curation of the interventions that the authors undertook at a range of academic conferences since 2016. It problematizes disciplined practices and expectations governing academic conference spaces and generates new ways of thinking and doing conferences otherwise.

The authors use posthuman, feminist materialist and post-qualitative theories to disrupt knowledge production in neoliberal and bureaucratic conferences spaces. The analysis they offer, and the rhizomatic writing and presentational styles they use, promote a form of educational activism through theory. They interrogate the conference space as a regulated, normalized and standardized mode of academic knowledge production – which they call the ‘AcademicConferenceMachine’ – and playfully subvert the dominant meanings and modes of conferences and workshops to show how we can better interact and produce research, with and for each other. The authors indicate how creative conference practices promote playful possibilities to imagine and produce knowledge differently.

This book will appeal to audiences ranging from established professionals to early career scholars, doctoral and master’s students in Education and the social sciences.