20 YEARS OF CIRN: Examining the past, present, and future of communities and technology

Conference Registrations are now open! Earlybird registrations end 15 October.

The DRAFT Conference Program is also available (subject to alteration).

The theme of the 2022 conference, “20 years of CIRN: Examining the past, present and future of communities and technology” aims to both look back at 20 years of the Prato conferences and the rich knowledge, and experience that have emerged from them, but as well, look at new emerging themes and challenges in a very different world. The conference may well be unique as an international long-term reflective event concerned with the internet.

We invite refereed (peer-reviewed) and non-refereed papers and presentations and workshop proposals that can take into account the changes that have occurred with communities and technologies since the earliest days of the internet, as well as accounts of contemporary innovation and challenges across the full range of community informatics interests: libraries, community action and engagement, international development, archives and memory, dis/ability, gender, race & class, identity, and the creative arts. And now, we add environmental informatics.

CIRN is an annual conference that normally takes place in the wonderful atmosphere at Monash University's campus in Prato, Italy, about 30 minutes by train from Florence. The past two years have featured online events because of COVID. The conference has always focussed on sharing lessons, learning together, and developing strategies to build more inclusive, just, and equitable communities. CIRN welcomes researchers and practitioners working towards human and civil rights, self-determination, sustainable development, and social justice to submit a proposal to this year’s CIRN conference.

Since its founding colloquium in 2003, the CIRN conferences have been marked by informality, collegiality and interdisciplinary thinking, bringing together people from many different countries in an ideal Italian setting.

While this is a physical event, we recognize in a post-COVID world that there is considerable potential for real-time participation and some events may be live-streamed.

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