The draft programme for the conference can be found here.

Registration for the conference is now open here.

The fees are £20 for the student/unwaged rate, and £40 for the standard/waged rate. The costs are subsidised by the British Academy, and they cover all refreshments, lunches, and one wine reception. There is also a three-course conference dinner for an additional charge.

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The Aesthetics of Drone Warfare

Humanities Research Institute, University of Sheffield

7-8 February 2020

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS:

Derek Gregory (University of British Columbia)

Antoine Bousquet (Birkbeck, University of London)

Drones have now become commercial and readily available, with innovators promising unprecedented solutions to sectors as wide ranging as agriculture, energy, public safety, and construction. But this multi-billion-dollar industry is founded upon the technology’s origins in a military context, and drone warfare is rapidly redefining the meaning of war, peace, and their temporal and geographical boundaries. Combining surveillance with targeting, satellite imaging with ground-level intelligence, human observation with algorithmic apparatuses, drones have catalysed new ways of making and experiencing war. This international two-day conference explores the issues surrounding drone warfare through the prism of aesthetics: aesthetics understood as art, and as the relationship between the body, the self, and the material environment. How does drone warfare extend and augment the human sensorium? How have writers and artists engaged in new forms or genres to address drone warfare? What is the role of the human in future war? What opportunities and challenges does information-based warfare pose for human rights and peace work?