The conference will be held in Rouen on 22&23 March 2018
After three conferences that have successively sought to define and lay the foundations for territorial sciences (CIST2011), to go beyond disciplinary frontiers and boundaries (CIST2014), namely through interdisciplinary collaboration, and to explore territorial social demand (CIST2016), the 4th CIST conference is aimed at mobilising the territorial sciences to address the question of representation. The conference’s objective is to use this approach and to determine its contribution to the analysis of territories from a theoretical, methodological and empirical point of view.
Derived from different disciplinary fields, particularly psychology, analyses of representations have spread throughout the human sciences and are used in a wide variety of contexts by geographers, sociologists, historians and specialists in the political and legal sciences. Both the concept of territory and that of representation, on account of their polysemy, provide the opportunity to bring together different topics, methods and disciplines.
The conference is open to every type of representation: concepts, ideas, frameworks, maps, texts, still or animated images, databases, and multimedia vectors used in the context of the construction, development and transformation of territories. Similarly, a wide variety of sources may be used: surveys, interviews, biographies, testimonies, legal, political and cultural documents, plans, programmes, projects or dreams, artistic productions, advertising, social or campaign materials, canonical works, transient footprints on social networks, etc. The most important aspect will be the possibility of using empirical material likely to provide useful input to scientific debates on the role of representations in the territorialisation of societies. Thus the different topics listed below should not be seen as imposing strict limits for session proposals, but rather as illustrations of the different meanings that can be given to the conference theme of “representing territories”.
– Territorial information,
– Territorial representations and practices,
– Cartography and geomatics,
– Digital representations,
– Territorial standards and political representations,
– Planning and construction of territories,
– Communication and territorial governance,
– Territories and elections,
– Mental maps,
– Lived territories, perceived territories,
– Imagination and images of territories,
– Constructing territorial identities,
– Modelling territories and simulation,
– Territorial patterns of individual pathways,
– Territorial aesthetics, sensitivities and passions,
– Symbolism, historical accounts and heritagisation of territories,
– Implementation of territorial projects,
– Representation of territories' futures.
Provisional Calendar
– April 14th, 2017 : date limite de soumission des propositions de session, à envoyer exclusivement par email
– During May 2017 : Responses from the Scientific Committee
– End of May to end of August 2017 : Call for communications, exclusively via the conference website cist2018.sciencesconf.org
– End of October to end of November 2017 : Final selection and preparation of the programme
Session Proposal Guidelines
Researchers, university researchers, young researchers and doctoral students may propose sessions.
Proposals should include:
– Title, and sub-title where appropriate,
– Presentation of the issue to be explored (between 180 and 250 words),
– Types of communications expected (theories, methods, fields, results).
These first three items should be written in French and English. They will be used in drawing up the call for papers for the selected sessions.
Les points suivants pourront être rédigés dans l’une ou l’autre langue :
– The potential value or benefits of the presentation proposed (publications, development of partnerships, enlarging of networks),
– Individuals, teams or laboratories targeted, within or outside the CIST, in function of the work already undertaken (recent bibliographical references may be specified),
– A short CV of the session co-facilitators (1/2 page).
Procedures for Evaluating the Session Proposals
The proposed sessions will be evaluated by the conference scientific council that includes the members of the CIST scientific council enlarged to include specialists in the field of the representation of territories. Session proposals will be evaluated according to the following criteria:
– Coherence with the general theme of the conference,
– Opportunities for multidisciplinarity.
Priority will be given to:
– Sessions jointly facilitated by researchers belonging to organisations, disciplines, schools of thought, etc.,
– Openness of the session to international contributions.
