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- Convenors:
-
Clare Stevens
(Cardiff University)
Laura Meyer (ENS European-University Viadrina)
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- Chair:
-
Clare Stevens
(Cardiff University)
- Format:
- Combined Format Open Panel
Short Abstract
The workshop brings together scholars working on the intersection of STS and IR, focusing on the mundane labour that goes into producing, sustaining, and fracturing technical systems at the conceptual, material, and political interfaces of where digital/analogue technical systems meet.
Description
Contemporary security discourse often frames digital technologies as radically new challenges requiring novel analytical frameworks. Yet, news archives are full of distrust for technologies we now take for granted: telegraphs raising anxieties about information overload; radios enabling unprecedented propaganda; early computing systems promising total battlefield transparency.
This panel and workshop move beyond innovation-speak to examine the mundane, often invisible labour that sustains and destabilises digital/analogue interfaces of security infrastructures. We focus on the conceptual, material, and political interface work between what gets categorised as “analogue” and “digital,” “old” and “new,” “stable” and “threatening.” By interrogating how such putative boundaries are produced, sustained, and fractured, we ask: Whose labour remains invisible in these systems and our methodological approaches to studying them? How do shifts in categorisation reshape the materiality of technical systems? In doing so, the panel contributes to STS by foregrounding the politics of categorisation and continuity in technoscientific change, aligning with EASST 2026’s theme of interrogating the politics of technoscientific futures.
This Combined Format Open Panel invites abstracts that identify patterns and changes at the interfaces between digital/analogue systems in the security sector. We also seek up to 20 abstracts from researchers interested in a creative workshop session on analogue/digital interface work, as expressions of interest for convening a journal special issue.
Expected Public Output: The workshop will consolidate an interdisciplinary STS and IR network and develop a collaborative research agenda on digital/analogue interface work in security. A key outcome will be a proposed special issue exploring continuities, ruptures, and hidden labour across these systems.
Practical Requirements: One open panel and one workshop space for up to 30 participants, arranged for group work. Materials needed: whiteboard and markers, four A2 paper pads, and coloured pens/pencils. Workshop includes up to 20 invited abstract contributors, with remaining spots open to other conference attendees.