The Academic Writing Lab is an important constituent of IIIT Delhi and is housed in the writing lab within the Department of Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH). We regularly host seminars, public talks and research related events. We aim to address the educational needs which are likely to emerge in the future with the ever increasing convergence of Computer Science with social systems resulting in an increasing role for the social sciences and the humanities in technology and business solutions.
A two-day symposium hosted by Academic Writing Lab (AWL) and Department of Social Sciences and Humanities (SSH), IIIT-Delhi
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Digital Technologies have influenced our lives, individually and as a collective agency. We have experienced a marked presence of digital technologies in the last few years and there is an urgent need to critically evaluate and understand how new technologies affect democratic societies. While the digital technologies have facilitated faster connectivity and information dissemination, bringing together multiple people across the globe to act, share their opinion, and even decide on issues online, it has also led to a deepening of economic, political, and social polarization.
With the influx of social media platforms, big data analysis, artificial intelligence, it has become pertinent that we question the ethical and political dimensions of technology especially as they all contribute to both creating and controlling the public sphere of communication, knowledge production, and more broadly the institutions essential for the functioning of democracy in the contemporary world.
Today scholars need to empirically map and conceptually engage with the multiple crises surrounding the idea of democracy. These include the deepening of political polarization, an ethos of distrust, trends that indicate accelerated populism and over and above the growing social inequalities. The AWL-SSH symposium aims to address these issues head on, and invites papers that explore how digital technology requires us to rethink the ethical and conceptual frameworks for categorizing certain features of contemporary politics, ethics, and values as democratic.
Our intention, as scholars of humanities research is also to understand how democracy can facilitate public awareness and conversations about digital technologies. This is the 3rd annual symposium hosted under the AWL-SSH series and as in the past we aim to address the larger societal, ethical, political, and technological context in which the digital is embedded, while also paying attention to the way in which digital space opens up new possibilities and challenges for the deepening of democratic ethos in contemporary societies.
The symposium will be held at the SSH dept, Indraprastha Institute of Information Technology, Delhi (IIIT-D), India with an option of joining virtually. You are requested to indicate your preference of joining in-person or virtually in the email body.
The symposium is open to all, but registration is mandatory. To attend, register here or scan this code.
Symposium Convenors: Dr. Payel C Mukherjee, Dr. Manohar Kumar, and Dr. Aasim Khan, Department of Social Sciences and Humanities, IIIT-Delhi
Symposium Coordination: Ms. Rushali Saha, AWL fellow, IIIT-Delhi
Symposium Website Maintenance: Mr. Ankit Agarwal, IIIT-Delhi
Symposium Poster Designer: Pranay Gupta
For any queries, please write to awl@iiitd.ac.in