Post Conference Update: We had a wonderful meeting in Fort Collins, Colorado. We heard from amazing keynote presenters and project-in-process presenters. We also refined the provisional commitments developed through our ongoing orienting process. We made tentative plans to organize a pre- or post- conference at the meetings of NCA and/or ICA in 2025, and reconvene with the Engaged Communication Scholarship Conference in 2026. More soon!
Engagement and Repair in Precarious Times
July 20-22, 2024
Please save the date for the 2024 Engaged Communication Scholarship Conference, scheduled for July 20-22 in Fort Collins, Colorado. Since the first Aspen Conference in 2002, a community of scholars has consistently gathered to learn from each other and improve the practices of engaged, collaborative scholarship in the communication discipline. This year’s conference will focus on the theme of repair. Out of precarity, pain, and potential sprouts exigency for repairing past wrongs and intentionally re-pairing for new collaborative possibilities. The events of the past few years have amplified attention to the disruptive power of change–extreme weather and climate change, transmissible illnesses, racial injustices, wars/conflicts, new technologies–and the need for creative partnerships to forge better futures. In times of enduring crisis , how do we do meaningful engaged work? What pairings and re-pairings become necessary to address the greatest challenges shaping our communities today? What ought engaged scholarship look like in conditions of precarity? What are technologies of repair, and how do we leverage resources of our differences to do the most good?
We welcome the submission of projects-in-progress at http://www.aspenengaged.org/submit by April 15, 2024. At the Conference, selected projects will be presented in a highly interactive discussion format in small table settings. These proposals should raise problems, questions, dilemmas, and tensions that we can wrestle with together. We welcome projects at all stages of development, as we hope to center ongoing challenges related to engaged work, including but not limited to: entering the field, relationship building, creating participative spaces, disseminating engaged products, and measuring impacts. In previous conferences, the most interesting conversations have seemed to center on problems that people have encountered or are encountering in their work.
We also welcome participation without a formal submission.