Ephemera Workshop: The disjointedness of time

On December 17th the platform hosted a one day seminar with on the theme of The Disjointedness of Time.

Bringing together scholars from across Europe, the seminar discussed relationships between ambitious reforms promising innovation and improvement of public services and the values, procedures and practices that constitute the history of the public sector. Key note speakers were Lisa Blackman, Goldsmiths, University of London, Monika Kostera, Jagiennonian University, Cracow/ University of Bradford, Jerzy Kociatkiewicz, University of Sheffield/SWPS, , Sybille Peters, Theatre of Research / FUNDUS THEATER Hamburg and Kevin Orr, University of St Andrews.

The event was framed by the following issues:

1. How do professionals experience dilemmas between an innovated, improved and more efficient future organization offered to them by new reform initiatives and the professional and the professional values offered to them by tradition and experience?
2. How does an attention to ghostly matters re-introduce questions of justice in organizational contexts by reminding us about the conditions of (im)possibility, i.e. of equality, business ethics or corporate social responsibility?
3. Digitalization and haunted/ haunting data: How new technologies make possible new sorts of disjointments between futures, presents and pasts and returns of forgotten and excluded debate