Spaces of Secrecy and Transparency
Thursday 29 March 2007
University of Sussex, Lecture Hall Arts A.103

( Maps available from this link )

Much work in Geography and STS is premised on methods that follow actors into the spaces of knowledge production. This seminar explores the limits to these models of openness, through charting the complex performance of transparency and secrecy in different commercial, military and state contexts, considering the difference such spatialities make to the practices of science.

 

Programme

10.30am	Arrival (Tea/Coffee)
11.00am	Opening Comments Brian Balmer (UCL) and Adam Hedgecoe (University of Sussex)
11.15am	Andrew Barry (Oxford University) Transparency, Secrecy and Discretion
12.00pm	Simon Reid-Henry (Queen Mary, University of London) Guantanamo Bay and the Hidden Technologies of Visibility
12.45pm	Lunch
1.45pm	Early Career Researcher Showcase:
	1. Caitriona McLeish (University of Sussex) Biological Weapons and the Former Soviet Union: Opening up the Secret City of Stepnogorsk
	2. Carole Boudeau (Brunel University) Discovering Spin: The Transparency of the Production of the British Dossier on Iraq's WMD
	3. Nadia Abu-Zahra ( Oxford University) Identity Documentation: Science or Subjection?
	4. David Leitner ( Cambridge University) Concealing Connections: ‘Networks’ and Purification in Biotechnology Policy
3.00pm	Tea/Coffee Break
3.30pm	John Abraham (University of Sussex) Secrecy in Regulatory Space: the Challenge for STS and Social Science
4.15pm	Brian Rappert (University of Exeter) Lost in Space: The Potential of De-spatialization, De-identification and De-mystification in Social Analysis
5.00pm	Closing Comments