Welcome to the our Post-Publishing Summer Newsletter! Please find underneath a selection of recent updates from Post-Publishing researchers. You can sign up to receive our newsletter here.
Simon Bowie was interviewed by the Italian newspaper Il Post for an article covering the consequences of the British Library cyberattack with Simon specifically talking about how a failure to prioritise IT infrastructure and library systems upgrade work led to critical security vulnerabilities for the library. Simon will also be feeding some of these thoughts into an upcoming conference paper titled ‘Proprietary software has failed: a community-driven open source security proposal’ at UKSG November Conference later this year.
Maddalena Fragnito passed her viva in June with no corrections on her thesis titled ‘The Necropolitics of Care: Exploring Practices of Insubordination in the Reproductive Sphere’. Maddalena will also this September present a paper titled ‘Fertility technologies and Israeli settler colonialism’ at the academic conference Studi culturali in Italia, at Università di Bologna, 12-13 September 2024.
On 26 June, Judith Fathallah hosted Dr Bethan Jones at the CPC (University of York) for the talk ‘Playing their Own Private Detectives: Forensic Fandom and True Crime’. The recording is available on the post-publishing website. Judith has completed the process of gathering external reviews for the shortlisted applications for the Open Book Collective’s Collective Development Fund. The final decision making panel will be held shortly, and the process of grant administration can then begin.
Adeola Eze, in her role as co-convenor at History Lab, co-organised the History Lab Annual Conference 2024 ‘Objects and Identity: Exploring Cultural Significance in Material Culture, History, and Identity’ hosted by the Institute of Historical Research (IHR) School of Advanced Study, University of London, at the Senate House on 19 July 2024. The conference provided room for thought-provoking discussions on the influence of material objects on history and cultural identities. Adeola also presented her paper, ‘Remixing Antiquity: Kathleen Fraser’s Textual and Visual Exchange with the Vindolanda Tablets’ discussing Fraser’s departure from conventional forms and techniques of poetry, leading her work into innovative forms of poetic expression, where she incorporates typography, artist books, and the significance of ‘errors’ or ‘visual transfusions’ in poetry. The conference included a material culture exhibition and an excursion to the Senate House Library, where attendees had the opportunity to engage with some experimental classic works.
Alexandros Plasatis received the wonderful news that the literary magazine he co-edits with immigrants and refugees, the other side of hope: journeys in refugee and immigrant literature, will be funded for a 4th year by Arts Council England. During Refugee Week the other side of hope editorial team were joined by refugee poets and authors from around the world for an online literary event organised by City of Sanctuary UK on 17 June.
Clare Harvey has been running more writing workshops in libraries throughout Nottinghamshire this summer as part of Inspire Culture’s I Am A Writer programme of socially engaged events.The workshops, entitled ‘Post me a Memory’, used the text written on vintage postcards as a prompt to inspire new writing and took place at Warsop Library on 3 May, Ladybrook Library on 21 May, Huthwaite Library on 24 May, and Newark Library (Buttermarket Centre) on 20 June.
In July, Peter Willis presented the paper ‘Duplicate, Copy, Print: Towards a Material History of the Zine’ at Global Book Cultures: Materialities, Collaborations, Access, the annual conference of the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing (SHARP) at the Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing at the University of Reading.
Janneke Adema, Simon Bowie, and Rebekka Kiesewetter – together with Julien McHardy – presented their research as the Experimental Publishing Group on the Open Book Futures (OBF) project at the EASST-4S annual conference ‘Making and Doing Transformations’ in Amsterdam from 16 to 19 July 2024. They hosted a roundtable titled ‘Experimenting with Academic Knowledge Production’ where they discussed their experiments in open and processual, interactive, and collaborative publishing (from database books to computational publications and combinatorial books) and, together with the audience, explored how academic publishing can be a site of experimentation and activism, care and engagement. The Experimental Publishing Compendium was included on the conference book stand of the scholar-led publisher Mattering Press.
Eva Weinmayr has been invited to give a keynote on ‘Ecologies of Dissemination – towards a decolonial feminist politics of reuse’ at the summer school Supervising Artistic and Practice-based Research: Publishing for Urgency, organised by Maibritt Borgen (Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Visual Arts), Mikkel Bogh, (PASS – Center for Practice-based Art Studies), and Rune Gade and Holger Schulze (University of Copenhagen) at the Art Hub in Copenhagen Denmark, from 19–22 August 2024.
Janneke Adema has co-authored, together with Samuel A. Moore, a new article titled ‘Just One Day of Unstructured Autonomous Time: Supporting Editorial Labour for Ethical Publishing Within the University,’ which has been published in the journal New Formations, as part of a special issue on Public Knowledge. The ‘Scaling Small’ article Janneke and Sam previously co-authored, was republished with a new introduction in OEI #104–105: Organisering!? Rum för kultur: Folkets hus, kulturhus, publiceringspraktiker edited by Jonas (J) Magnusson & Cecilia Grönberg. Janneke has also been invited to give two keynotes, the first one ‘Experimental Publishing as a Critical Praxis: Rethinking Distinctions between Research and Publishing’ at the summerschool Supervising Artistic and Practice-based Research: Publishing for Urgency, organised by Maibritt Borgen (Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Visual Arts), Mikkel Bogh, (PASS – Center for Practice-based Art Studies), and Rune Gade and Holger Schulze (University of Copenhagen) at the Art Hub in Copenhagen, Denmark, from 19-22 August 2024, and the second one on ‘Radical and Alternative Publication Futures’ at the seminar Decolonizing Academic Publishing: Radical and Alternative Publication Futures, organised by Anindya Sekhar Purakayastha and Swati Guha (The Institute of Language Studies and Research (ILSR), Kolkata) and Mursed Alam (The Ambedkar Center for Social and Cultural Studies, Gour College, University of Gour Banga), which will take place online on 4 September 2024.
