Plenary Lecture on “Diasporas: Migration, Media and Affect” with Sandra Ponzanesi (5-6 June, University of London)

At the School of Advanced Studies, University of London, Sandra Ponzanesi gave a plenary lecture on the relation between migration and diaspora in time of digital connectivity, “Diasporas: Migration, Media and Affect”, at the conference on “Digital Diasporas: Interdisciplinary Perspectives”.

Diaspora figurations provide new possible cartographies to map the self in relation to increasingly complex patterns of globalization and localization, avoiding closures and the negative effects of identity politics. This talk explored how these new worlds on the move are mutually shaped by the affordances and possibilities offered by new digital technologies and the transformation of border politics. What are digital diasporas and how do they come to encode transformed notions of home, transnational belonging and postcolonial spatiality? How is difference rearticulated online and how is affect reshaped through connectivity, by remediating distance and intimacy. This intervention proposed a critical overview of the notion of the digital diaspora, and its many disciplinary takes and media-specific variations, in order to grasp contemporary human mobility as shaped by and constitutive of an unevenly interconnected world and new patterns of belonging.

More information on the conference and its keynote and plenary speakers can be found here. For the full conference programme, see here.