Digital Temporalities: Slow, Quick and Everything In-between
What happens to our understanding of the digital when we begin with time, rather than space?
For too long, digital studies has leaned on what Mark Graham terms “unhelpful spatial metaphors”—cyberspace, website, platform—grounded in the assumption of a homogeneous digital speed operating across an undifferentiated social field. This spatial framing often obscures the uneven, affective, and power-laden temporalities through which digital life unfolds, where anticipation, interruptions, delays and repetition are not side effects but central to digital experience. When embraced as an analytic lens and a methodological sensibility, temporality becomes a powerful thread through which the intricate entanglements of technological systems, lived experience, and socio-environmental transformation can be traced and creatively reimagined.
The symposium day will include keynote provocations by Dr Dang Nguyen (RMIT) and Dr TingTing Liu (UTS), as well as rapid papers from participants. Researchers from different disciplines, thematic groups and career stages are welcome to participate.
This symposium will take place on 12 August, 2025, from 9.30am to 4.30pm at The University of Queensland. The symposium is free and will be catered. Attendees are also invited to join an informal pay-as-you-go dinner.
Tentative program
9:00am–9:15am | Opening |
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9:15am–9:45am | Keynote: Born into Velocity: Automation, Friction, and the Time of Infrastructure Dang Nguyen (RMIT) |
9:45am–11:00am | Panel 1: Digital Temporalities and Creative Practices Glitch Rituals and Slowness: Reimagining Human-AI Interaction through Temporal Drift, Daniel Binns (RMIT) All Alone on Pilgrimage: Exploring Temporal Multiplicity and Virtual Spatial Impacts on Lyrics in the Video Game Pilgrimage, Rani Tesiram (UQ) Lightspeed and Time in Our Hyperconnected World, Kathryn Brimblecombe-Fox (UQ) |
Morning Break: 30 mins |
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11:30am–12:30pm | Panel 2: Time and digital attachment Crossing Worlds: Peasant-based Insurgencies in Digital Vietnam, Giang Nguyen-Thu (UQ) The Time Work of Everyday Digital Intimacies, Maddison Sideris (University of Melbourne) Re-configuring Time: Smartphones, Networks, Performance, Abbie Trott (UQ) |
Lunch: 60 mins |
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1:30pm–2:00pm | Keynote: The Aussies Are Too Slow’: Geo-temporal Frictions and Gendered Perceptions in Chinese Platform Expansion Tingting Liu (UTS) |
2:00pm–3:30pm | Panel 3: Rural world Timing It Right: Chinese Rural Women’s Algorithmic Imaginaries and the Temporal Logics of Yuan[缘], Bingxi Huang (UQ) Out of Time: Temporal Trap in Content Creation, Lisa Lindawati (UQ) Reflections on Investigating a Change Process: The Role of Digital Narratives in Ecotourism, Swastika Samanta (UQ) |
Afternoon Break: 30 mins |
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4:00pm–4:30pm | Closing remarks |
