Crossroads in Cultural Studies Conference 14-17th December 2016 Program Index

cultural studies and the humanities more generally. Design research is at home at the crossroads. We are excited by
the mutual and generative possibilities of a meeting between design research and cultural studies.
Abby Mellick Lopes
Cooling the Commons
Creating a transdisciplinary space for knowledge creation leads to a question of interest to design – how to
act on new knowledge? The ethics of intervention is explored in a research collaboration between cultural
and design researchers addressing how residents across “hotspots” in Western Sydney cope with the heat
during summer months. The project utilises Gibson-Graham et al’s (2013) theory of commoning – making,
sharing and regenerating commons – as a way of cultivating citizen participation in cooling strategies and
contributing to the knowledge base about community resilience in Western Sydney.
Alison Gill* & Abby Mellick Lopes
Repair Cultures
The project investigates the relationship between charitable donation, consumer waste practices around
clothes, shoes and appliances, and services of repair in Sydney. We use digital ethnographic tools –
interview, site analysis, photography, video – to attend to the tasks of everyday repair and the interplay
between discursive and tacit knowledge in practice. We identify opportunities for community learning to
mend a declining culture of repair and services that are being overlooked.
Michelle Catanzaro
Negotiating In/visible Matter
This paper will discuss the ways that the designer as researcher can bring meaning and understanding to the
mutability of cultural matter. Drawing on a visual-phenomenological investigation and a participatory
research project, this paper explores how photographic practice enters into the hermeneutic play of
interpretation and understanding in interrogating “geographies of the familiar” (Kaika 2004).
Katrina Sandbach
Envisioning Research
This paper will demonstrate design research in action within collaborative partnerships and participatory
research scenarios, paying particular attention to a practice-oriented PhD study that investigates creative
initiatives in Western Sydney and a recoding of perceptions of the West. In doing so, the designer’s capacity
to envision, generate, interpret, and articulate research will be illuminated.
7M
Media Justice (Chair, Kiran Grewal)
Gerard Goggin Disability and Media Justice
In approaching media justice, critical and cultural accounts of disability offer rich insights and provocations.
In this paper, I discuss media justice from a disability standpoint, paying particular attention to the social
practices, cultures of use, technology appropriations, and politics that are associated with digital media
platforms. Firstly, I review accounts of disability and justice, looking at what these add to our understanding
of justice. Second, I look at the specific claims that disability has against our foundational understandings of
communication and media, and their relationships to democracy. If we rethink media, as a result of this
evolving transformation, what would be the elements of a disability account of media justice? Thirdly, I
discuss contemporary examples of acts, practices, and claims of disability-inflected media justice – with
reference to the case of Anna Stubblefield, various Twitter-supported movements intervening into cultural
debates, and new forms of disability activism using digital platforms.
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