About the seminar
This seminar discusses digital disconnection in relation to the human body, and more specifically with respect to the ill body and the tracked body. What potentials are there for these bodies to disconnect in times of datafication, and what “work” does it take to reconnect when facing involuntary disconnection?
Maja Klausen’s research examines aspects of digital patienthood including relations to the datafied welfare state. Through qualitative methods she explores how patient roles, experiences and imaginaries are transformed in meetings with digital technologies and the increasingly datafied public health sector.
In her talk, “Patienthood and the (im)possibilities of disconnection”, Maja will share findings and thoughts from interviews with patients living with chronic illness and point to how the at times unruly, chronically ill body limits, hampers, and shapes practices of disconnecting.
These empirically grounded perspectives on life within and disconnected from chronic care infrastructures point to disconnection as a research agenda within critical digital health studies.
Sne Scott Hansen’s research investigates intersections of the human body, communication, and the digital. In the seminar, she will speak under the heading “Disconnecting the communicating body: On the human work of articulation, maintenance, and repair in the use of personal tracking devices”.
Findings will be presented on how users navigate recurring processes of digital disconnection with wearable devices by doing manual repair work to reconnect. Scott Hansen argues that as humans we are dealing with moments of disconnection all the time when we try to integrate digital tracking devices with the body.
Looking at the work that, oftentimes unnoticed, goes into repairing breakages to maintain the connection with our wearable devices tells us something about the nature of our relationship with digital tracking technologies and the degree of human agency in such relations.
The seminar takes place March 7 13.00-14.00 Norway time/CET.
Participants
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Maja Klausen is Associate Professor at the University of Southern Denmark, Department of Design, Media and Educational Science. She is involved in the Digital Consultation-project funded by Velux Foundation and the Datafied Living-project funded by Independent Research Fund Denmark.
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Sne Scott Hansen is PhD Fellow at the Department of Communication, University of Copenhagen and the ERC-funded Datafied Living project at the University of Copenhagen. She is part of the Center for Tracking and Society.
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Karin Fast (digitox, University of Karlstad) will chair the seminar.
About the digitox seminar series
- Digitox welcomes academics and students to digital seminars, usually monthly.
- If you are interested in attending, please send an email to Trine Syvertsen to get info on mailing lists and zoom links.
- The format is usually two short presentations followed by discussion and questions.
- In he seminar, we also welcome you to share information about upcoming and current publications and events pertaining to disconnection and detox.