Call for Expressions of Interest – 54th Annual Symposium

Between humans and machines: the pasts and futures of automation

16-17 November 2023
Convenors: Julian Thomas and Jean Burgess

Since the late eighteenth century, the ‘machinery question’ has sparked deep social and political divisions, and stimulated new fields of social and cultural enquiry, imaginative thought and creative speculation. Recent advances in artificial intelligence and other forms of automation have generated new interests, problems, methods, and capabilities across an array of humanities disciplines and creative arts – as well as new connections between these disciplines and the technological sciences. Researchers have complicated conventional narratives of technological transformation, enabling a deeper understanding of the possibilities, paradoxes and hazards of automation and co-creation.

The 53rd Annual Academy Symposium will be held as a two-day face-to-face program, provisionally scheduled for 16-17 November 2023, location to be confirmed.

We are now seeking expressions of interest from Academy Fellows who wish to present at the Symposium.

We also encourage you to nominate other researchers who you believe would bring an important perspective to the Symposium.

Places are limited, and the convenor will be looking to select presenters from a range of disciplines and career stages to ensure a breadth of new perspectives. This symposium aims to bring together scholars and practitioners now working on human/machine relations across the humanities in Australia and elsewhere. We are inviting proposals for traditional papers and panels, as well as for sessions and activities in other formats that could supplement the main program. We are interested in topics including:

• automation and machine-human co-creation
• the automation of cultural taste
• automation and creative labour
• human accountability for the work of machines
• explanation and narrative in automation narratives
• First Nations data sovereignty
• Automation, AI and cultural policy and economics

Please complete the form below (250 words maximum) or contact the Events Team events@humanities.org.au for further information. Outcomes will be notified by early June.