CFP: Learning Infrastructures in the Social Sciences and Humanities

Special issue of the journal Learning Inquiry (http://www.springerlink.com/content/120592/)
Edited by Jeremy Hunsinger
Papers Due: May 15th 2009
Please contact the editor to discuss topics at jhuns.(@)vt.edu (remove brackets)

In the last 20 years, the learning infrastructures of the social sciences and humanities have transformed dramatically toward a more plural set of practices, methods, systems, and tools. In this issue, we are looking for contributions from social informatics, humanistic informatics, cultural informatics, digital humanities, internet studies, design research, media studies, and related fields dealing with the learning infrastructures. I am seeking papers that deal empirically, analytically and/or critically with the learning infrastructures in the social sciences and humanities. Cyberinfrastructures, physical infrastructures and organizational infrastructures have been transformed through the politics, economics, and technologies surrounding our learning infrastructures.

Learning infrastructures are part of professors and students scholarly experiences everyday. These infrastructures are part of how students begin their engagement with the social sciences and humanities and perhaps become part of how they maintain that engagement throughout their lives. Beyond our professors, departments, centers and institutes, our learning infrastructures are mediating our disciplinarity and interdisciplinarities to our students. In short, learning infrastructures are a part of how students learn to be scholars in various disciplines and citizens in the world-at-large.

Part of the debate surrounding learning infrastructures in the social sciences and humanities is the over/under-definition and over/underdetermination of terms such as learning and infrastructure in disciplinary and interdisciplinary discourses. In this CFP, I want to encourage papers that help to define and critically engages those terms.

Possible topics:
• Transformation of institutions in relation to learning infrastructures
• New methods, new understandings in the social sciences and humanities related to learning infrastructures
• New disciplines, interdisciplines and transdisciplines and learning infrastructures
• Political economics of learning infrastructures
• Ethics, norms, and politics surrounding learning infrastructures
• Openness and/or closedness in learning infrastructures
• Social/Cultural/Informatics informatics and learning infrastructures
• New directions for learning infrastructures based on social sciences and humanities
• Cultural environmentalism and learning infrastructures
• Knowledge/Design ecologies and learning infrastructures

Review process will be double blind peer review following editorial selection.   We expect to place fewer than 8 papers in this special issue. We would prefer papers between 4000-16000 words. Papers should be submitted to http://www.editorialmanager.com/linq/ Please contact the editor to discuss your paper and/or when you submit your paper.