[Air-L] Call for Papers: AI & Archives - Cambridge Forum on AI: Culture and Society

Fri Oct 4 02:05:17 PDT 2024

Dear Colleagues,

I am writing to share a Call for Papers for an upcoming themed issue on AI
& Archives
<https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/cambridge-forum-on-ai-culture-and-society/announcements/call-for-papers/ai-and-archives>,
which will be published in the Cambridge Forum on AI: Culture and Society
<https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/cambridge-forum-on-ai-culture-and-society>,
a new open-access publication from Cambridge University Press. This issue
will be guest edited by Katie MacKinnon (University of Copenhagen), Louis
Ravn (University of Copenhagen/University of Amsterdam), Eun Seo Jo
(Cornell University), Caroline Bassett (Cambridge University), and Nanna
Bonde Thylstrup (University of Copenhagen).

The journal aims to advance research about and produced with artificial
intelligence, emphasizing the social and cultural implications of AI as
well as exploring AI-driven methodologies for critical research. This
themed issue will focus on the intersections between artificial
intelligence, machine learning, and archives, exploring archival practices
and the archival turn in AI, ethical and political challenges, and the
evolving role of archives in the age of AI. You can find the full call text
below.

We invite contributions that engage with empirical, theoretical, or
methodological perspectives, as well as commentaries from artists,
professionals, and policymakers. Submissions from scholars at all career
levels are welcome, particularly those from emerging researchers and
perspectives from the Majority World.

Key dates to note:

   -

   Abstract submission deadline: November 1, 2024
   -

   Full paper submission deadline: March 1, 2025

For more details about submission guidelines, please refer to the full call
for papers attached. Should you have any questions, feel free to reach out
to us or the journal team.

We would appreciate it if you could share this call with your colleagues
and networks.

Best wishes,

*Katie MacKinnon*

Postdoctoral Fellow

University of Copenhagen

On behalf of Nanna Bonde Thylstrup, Louis Ravn, Eun Seo Jo, and Caroline
Bassett

CfP: AI & Archives

The journal invites submissions for the Themed Issue: AI & Archives, guest
edited by Katie Mackinnon (University of Copenhagen), Louis Ravn
(University of Copenhagen/Amsterdam), Nanna Bonde Thylstrup (University of
Copenhagen), Eun Seo Jo (Cornell University) and Caroline Bassett
(Cambridge University).

Description

This themed issue examines the connections—past, present, and
future—between artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and archives.
Our exploration is driven by three interrelated trends, which together
indicate what we describe as an “archival turn” in AI research (Taurino &
Smith, 2022) across the disciplinary spectrum from computational sciences
to the social sciences and humanities.

Firstly, archival concepts such as provenance, traceability, appraisal and
afterlives are increasingly mobilized to illuminate and confront issues in
AI surrounding fairness, accountability, transparency, and ethics.
Moreover, a growing number of AI and ML scholars are engaging with cultural
theories of the archive as well as the normative orientation towards (data)
justice in critical archival studies to better understand and address the
ethical and political challenges posed by emerging machine learning systems
(Jo & Gebru; Thylstrup, 2022; Kale et al., 2023; Basman, 2022).

Secondly, archival institutions themselves are increasingly incorporating
AI into their professional workflows, prompting new discussions about
human-machine interactions, ethical dilemmas, and methodological and
critical potentials. Previous research has highlighted the growing use of
AI in various aspects of recordkeeping, from curation to retrieval and
annotation. As Colavizza et al. (2021) observe, “archives acquire AI
capacities to organize their workflows around the big data they possess, as
well as to offer their big data to outside organizations.” This integration
of AI into archival practices raises critical questions about bias,
representation, and the preservation of authenticity in our digital
heritage, while also opening up new possibilities for reimagining the
afterlives of archival data. Moreover, as archives evolve from collections
of administrative records to repositories of data, new political dynamics
emerge, reshaping the roles and responsibilities of institutions that
generate and manage open data collections. These dynamics also raise
classic questions of archival power: who is responsible and accountable for
curation when AI is part of the work flow? What kinds of infrastructural
architecture does AI bring to archives – how closed or open? And how could
AI be employed to render the archive open, plural, agonistic and
contestable?

Finally, the advent of AI technologies also challenges and redefines
cultural archival theories (Thylstrup et al., 2021). What—or when (Acker,
2020)—is a record in AI regimes? How does cloud capitalism change
structures of “archontic power” (Derrida, 1996; Harris, 2017)? How might we
conceptualize AI regimes as unique archival formations within broader
archaeologies of knowledge? And how do gendered and colonial archival
structures of power endure within AI systems? These questions are explored
not only in classic academic knowledge scholarship, but also – and
increasingly – in aesthetic and artistic engagements with AI (Onuoha, 2022;
Hunger, 2022; Salvaggio, 2024; Foldes, 2024).

We invite contributions that are empirical, theoretical, or methodological
in nature, as well as commentaries from artists, professionals and
policymakers, to further explore these critical, methodological, and
conceptual intersections between AI and archives. We welcome contributions
from all career levels and particularly encourage submissions from emerging
career scholars and Majority World perspectives.

We invite contributions focusing on, but not restricted to, the following
themes:

   -

   Politics of open-source data archives (non-profits, community, activist,
   etc.)
   -

   Data collection practices, networks, platforms, infrastructures and
   systems
   -

   Archival aesthetics of/in AI
   -

   Histories of AI and archives
   -

   STS perspectives on archives and AI
   -

   Critical Data, Dataset and AI Studies of archival practices and
   infrastructures
   -

   Data formats, quality, scope, scale
   -

   Automated archival methodologies
   -

   AI, archives and Digital Humanities
   -

   Artistic engagements with AI and archives
   -

   Exploration of the potentials and challenges of mobilizing concepts such
   as archive, provenance, appraisal in machine learning contexts
   -

   Critical archival theories (including feminist, critical race, queer and
   post/decolonial theories) and AI

Deadlines

In the first instance, please submit an abstract of 500 words (excluding
references) to the journal at cfc at cambridge.org and cc the editors (Katie
MacKinnon: kam at hum.ku.dk, Louis Ravn: lora at hum.ku.dk, Nanna Bonde
Thylstrup: nannab at hum.ku.dk, Eun Seo Jo: unsojo at cornell.edu and Caroline
Bassett: cab238 at cam.ac.uk). If your abstract is accepted, you will be
invited to submit a full paper. You will be notified within 2 weeks of the
abstract submission deadline.

The deadline for submissions of abstracts is Nov 1 2024.

The deadline for submissions of full papers is March 1 2025. Submissions of
full papers should be made through the journal's online peer review system
<https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fmc.manuscriptcentral.com%2Fforum-cfc&data=05%7C02%7Cnannab%40hum.ku.dk%7Cd6d683b230a64e67e69708dcdee5e7a7%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C638630326228658547%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=Lh%2FvSA9oCLqPF4lT8rLoNgZNNwKvEhNdZ1YpvseA4go%3D&reserved=0>.
Authors should consult the journal’s author instructions
<https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cambridge.org%2Fcore%2Fjournals%2Fcambridge-forum-on-ai-culture-and-society%2Finformation%2Fauthor-instructions&data=05%7C02%7Cnannab%40hum.ku.dk%7Cd6d683b230a64e67e69708dcdee5e7a7%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C638630326228814816%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=kxRXX0ny%2FVl4WvlFGZnCOYfsDW6Fu5sO448i67O3DRo%3D&reserved=0>
prior to submission.

All full papers will be peer reviewed in line with the journal’s review
process
<https://eur02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cambridge.org%2Fcore%2Fjournals%2Fcambridge-forum-on-ai-culture-and-society%2Finformation%2Fpeer-review-information%2Freview-process&data=05%7C02%7Cnannab%40hum.ku.dk%7Cd6d683b230a64e67e69708dcdee5e7a7%7Ca3927f91cda14696af898c9f1ceffa91%7C0%7C0%7C638630326228814816%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=GKoOZFjOAYwFbf%2BXTzyRy5N9U%2BnzHYK9jMKScXIdjmE%3D&reserved=0>.
Acceptance of an abstract does not guarantee acceptance of the full paper.

Submission guidelines

Cambridge Forum on AI: Culture and Society seeks to engage multiple subject
disciplines and promote dialogue between policymakers and practitioners as
well as academics. The journal therefore encourages authors to use an
accessible writing style.

Authors have the option to submit a range of article types to the journal.
Please see the journal’s author instructions
<https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/cambridge-forum-on-ai-culture-and-society/information/author-instructions>
for more information.

Articles will be peer reviewed for both content and style. Articles will
appear digitally and open access in the journal.

All submissions should be made through the journal’s online peer review
system <https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/forum-cfc>. Author should consult
the journal’s author instructions
<https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/cambridge-forum-on-ai-culture-and-society/information/author-instructions>
prior to submission.

All authors will be required to declare any funding and/or competing
interests upon submission. See the journal’s Publishing Ethics guidelines
<https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/cambridge-forum-on-ai-culture-and-society/information/journal-policies/publishing-ethics>
for more information.

Contacts

Questions regarding submission and peer review can be sent to the
journal’s inbox
at cfc at cambridge.org