7th Innovation in Information Infrastructures (III) Workshop

We invite abstracts for the 7th Innovation in Information Infrastructures (III) workshop.

The III workshops have their roots in the 1990s in a convergence of interests amongst European and US researchers investigating the growth and increasing salience of enduring complex information technology assemblages that could not be adequately captured by prevalent terminologies of information systems. Such information infrastructures (sometimes termed cyber-infrastructures and knowledge infrastructures) shared some common features (Star and Ruhleder 1996)–erected over an extended period upon an installed base of information practices and technological components. Scholars from cognate traditions within science, technology and innovation studies, information systems, and organization studies came together, united by a concern to critically engage with these developments. This led to a successful series of informal research workshops, which culminated in a number of journal special editions.ⁱ The history of these events can be found here.

The 7th III workshop builds on that early productive engagement and its distinctive analytical style: fiercely empirical; conceptually dynamic with a focus on mid-range theory; paying detailed attention to the material; engaging with both immediate and broader, longer-term developments; concerned with how things might be done otherwise; interested in power, structure and agency.  Our interest in the forms of social order created and/or maintained through information infrastructures, prompted by the societal embedding of information infrastructures, their operation, and outcomes, is carried forward by our partnership with a sister community addressing Governance by Infrastructure.

The 6th III workshop (University of Surrey, September 2019) had a very specific focus on the critical relationship between Platform Ecosystems and Information Infrastructures. III 2024 will relaunch our interdisciplinary research community after an extended break resulting from the covid pandemic. We invite papers that engage with contemporary developments in a world of rapidly changing and increasing pervasive information infrastructures and systems integrated into routine, widely shared services.

We are seeking to promote analytic work that mobilises and resonates with the broad III approach outlined above in novel, interesting ways to empirically explore the landscape and manifestations of evolving digitalization in society. However, we are not seeking to reify any particular 'school' of infrastructure studies. Our ambition is accordingly inclusive: to recruit all scholars who may be interested in building upon and extending this productive tradition.

ⁱ Paul N. Edwards, Geoffrey C. Bowker, Steven J. Jackson, and Robin Williams (eds) (2009) ‘e-infrastructures’, Special Issue of the Journal of the Association for Information Systems, (Vol. 10, Issue 5).   
Monteiro, E., Pollock, N. and Williams, R. (eds) (2014), ‘Innovation in Information Infrastructures’, Special Issue of the Journal of the Association for Information Systems, Volume 15, Special Issue, pp. Issue 4 and 5, April/May 2014.

For any enquiries, use IIIWorkshop2024@gmail.com