SASE mini-conference / MC05: Failures and Dilemmas: Exploiting Disruptive Interventions in Neoliberalism, 27-29 June 2024, Limerick
Failures and dilemmas constitute major sources of disruption in the emotions, politics and technologies of neoliberalism. They can open spaces of radical change and learning, yet they can also generate new forms of privilege and exploitation born of crisis and recession. At the SASE mini-conference we sought to understand the expectations and contestations that emerge in contemporary forms of failure, as well as the dilemmas posed by political, economic and social interventions.
Read more HERE.
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UVA and NSF conference / Disclosing Failure, Benefit or Hazard for STEM Women Faculty? Advancing An Equity and Inclusion Perspective, 11-13 June 2024, Charlottesville, VA
Failure Lab UW had the immense pleasure to participate through a member of the conference organizing committee in an international research project funded by National Science Foundation (NSF), with Gertrude J. Fraser (University of Virginia) as project coordinator, and Claire Holman Thompson as manager. The NSF grant – “Equity and Inclusion in Research Failure Disclosure” (2023-24) – organized a conference at University of Virginia, June 11-13, 2024, which invited dozens of the nation’s top women in science, technology, engineering and math do articulate the topic of “failure disclosure in STEM”.
Disclosing Failure showed how disruptions to the idea of science do not come from the outside, a noncompliant public, but from the limits science itself imposes on its “palatability” and inclusion dynamics. Disclosing Failure joined a diverse group of STEM practitioners from a wide variety of institutions and renowned failure scholars for three days of community connections, papers and presentations, and ample opportunity to enjoy Virginia’s outdoor wonders and historical sights.
Read more HERE
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UW Seminar: Failure Regimes: Economization, Creolization and Moralization of Failing, 6-7 May 2024, Warsaw
Critical failure studies have made a major breakthrough when it comes to the theoretical framing and methodological imaginary of failure. This entails first and foremost switching from an individual to a more social and institutional perspective. Talking about failure regimes, contexts, and cultures is now meant to underline that failures are not individual blunders and lost opportunities that are self-evident.
The Failure regimes seminar that was organized at IPSiR, university of Warsaw, opened an opportunity for advancing new concepts. Powerful guest speech by Catherine Alexander (University of Durham) on different kinds of backlashes in relation to care – public and private sectors. How does creativity materialize in the form of pressure on the people who fail/ed?
We learned about the meaning of being a “good failure” in philosophy. The “good sport”! You can’t be philosophically original and smart at the same time. Powerful guest-speech by Costică Brădățan (Texas Tech University).
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Failure Tour, 10-13 March 2024, Essex, London, Sussex
We planned a series of convenings and transfers of knowledge between research groups on the global manifestation and the impact of policy failures. We met up in Essex, London and Sussex. Nice combos with ignorance studies, organizational ghost theory, and anthropology of failure and projections in relation to AI were in the making:
11 March 2024, “Revolutionary Epistemology: New Directions in Ignorance and Failure Studies,” University of Essex, Essex Sociology. co-organised by Linsey McGoey (University of Essex), Adriana Mica (University of Warsaw), Mikołaj Pawlak (University of Warsaw) and Paweł Kubikcki (SGH Warsaw School of Ecnomics) with others.
12 March 2024, research forum, University College London, Department of Anthropology, with Timothy Carroll (UCL) and Kelly Fagan Robinson (University of Cambridge).
13 March 2024, “SocCrim Seminar Series: POST-FAILURE”, University of Sussex, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, with Paul McGuinness
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LISIS Seminar: Failure Studies, 13 November 2024, Paris
The seminar will discuss failure inequalities and gather researchers from two labs: LISIS and Failure Lab UW.
LISIS (Laboratoire Interdisciplinaire Sciences Innovations Sociétés) is a French interdisciplinary lab that gathers social scientists and management scholars interested in STS, innovation and transition studies, organizational studies, and failure theory.
Read more HERE
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Failure in Science, 12-14 December 2022, Hannover
We hold “Failure in Science” as part of the broader Thematic Week “Failure Matters”, a funding initiative of the Volkswagen Foundation, December 12-14, 2022, at the conference center Herrenhausen Palace in Hannover.
The active participants were offered the opportunity to engage with preeminent figures and pioneers in failure and contemporary science studies. They met with representatives of research networks on failure now in the making at the global level, combining quantitative and qualitative research methods. The thematic week included a wide range of themes and will experiment with a variety of meeting formulas, ranging from the traditional panel, to research salon and even the nonconventional F*** up Tales event, where the participants will share and analyze stories of failure in science.
Programme (CLICK HERE)
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Failure: Limits to Success and Inequality of Falling in Contemporary Society, 14-17 September 2022, Warsaw
We organized “Failure” as thematic group in the framework of Polish Sociological Congress 2022, in Warsaw. The thematic group proposed to explore the relation between failure, inequality and success limitations from an interdisciplinary perspective. We argued that failure is a universal experience.
At the end of the day, however, there is inequality in the stories of failure that are being told. Contemporary crises raise awareness about these inequalities. They open possibilities for social change with concrete support from international actors, social movements, policy agendas and new failure experts. The role of social sciences and public policy studies in all this is to identify the dynamic of the rhetoric of inequality of failure. To inquire what are the variations at global and country levels in making sense and coming to terms with it.
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Power of Failure: New Perspectives in Social Theory and Practice, 7-8 May 2018, Warsaw
We organized this workshop in the framework of the Unintended Consequences series, organized by University of Warsaw and affiliated academic centers. The workshop proposed to depart from the conventional manner of discussing failure and the power of failure as something out of the ordinary and paradoxical. To bring in contributions that deal with this topic in terms of everyday life and practice. The power of failure to effect (or not) social change and to lead (or not) to success is an issue that goes beyond the visible manifestation of power games between major financial, political and economic actors. The power of failure concerns in fact the social life in its entirety. And although the major and spectacular episodes of failure and crisis are ‘needed’ in order to render this power obvious and to call attention to it, the fact of the matter is that the power of failure does not need such a grandiose arena to manifest.