Dear colleagues,
Critical Infrastructures and Image
Politics research group warmly invites
you to consider the call for papers for a special issue of Culture Machine
Vol. 25: University as Infrastructure, guest edited by Alexandra Anikina,
Johannes Bruder, Megen de Bruin-Mol, Stephen Cornford, Kwame Phillips & Geoff
Cox. See the link for full details and the short version of the open call
below.
Call for Papers: Culture Machine, Vol. 25: University as Infrastructure
Read the full Call for Papers here:
https://culturemachine.net/vol25-cfp-university-as-infrastructure/
Deadline for abstracts (300 words): 15 September 2025
Universities have become increasingly dependent on a proliferation of
outsourced services, database providers and information management systems.
From virtual learning environments, digital attendance systems, human
resources software, booking platforms, data repositories, and online teaching
platforms to the basic provision of email and server space, much of the
infrastructure of the contemporary marketised university is outsourced to big
tech. The time of both students and staff is increasingly called upon to
input, update, confirm, action, and feedback on information stored in
outsourced databases, producing surplus value for external software providers,
many of which are ultimately owned by private equity firms. The student and
staff experience and well-being both vaunted as key priorities by all
universities have become determined by the functionality of these online
systems and their affective operations.
Vol 25 of Culture Machine aims to take stock of these infrastructural
challenges to the collective creation of critical culture and theory. We argue
that an understanding of the University from an infrastructural perspective
helps to stress that the technologies it chooses to adopt follow a colonial
and extractivist model with damaging effects on the wider environment and the
well-being of people. What is required are viable alternatives consisting of
technologies but also knowledge practices and organisational cultures, with a
commitment to care and justice in development and maintenance processes.
Initiated by the Critical Infrastructures & Image
Politics research group at Winchester
School of Art in collaboration with the Centre for the Study of the Networked
Image, London South Bank University and
Critical Media Lab, Basel Academy of Art and
Design, this special issue aims to take stock of the challenges and
possibilities here for University as Infrastructure.
sent on behalf of CIIP
Alexandra Anikina
[Sasha is a short form of Alexandra & my preferred informal name]
[she/they]
Dr Alexandra Anikina
Senior Lecturer in Media Practices
Programme Co-Lead MA Global Media Management
Co-Director, Critical Infrastructures and Image Politics / CIIP
https://criticalinfrastructures.net/
Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Rep for Art & Media Technology Department
Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton
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