Audio is the broad term used to describe recorded, transmitted, and reproduced sound transformed into a distributable form through technology. Scholars from various disciplines have begun to explore the incorporation of audio in broadening access to knowledge in their respective fields. The Chair’s focus is on the use of audio for the dissemination of scientific knowledge through two ongoing projects: The Academic Citizen, a podcast series that aims to engage with issues higher education and the promotion of science communication for social justice, and Sound Matters, an interdisciplinary symposium that focuses on knowledge production through audio modalities.
The Academic Citizen
The South African Research Chair in Science Communication produces and funds the independent podcast series The Academic Citizen since 2022.
The aims of the podcast are to:
- Create a space for wide and deep discussion about key issues animating higher education in South Africa, Africa, the global south and beyond.
- Create a space for interdisciplinary exchange for academic researchers and educators.
- Help researchers, educators and scientists to tell their stories, and listen to and learn from each other’s insights and experiences.
- Create a space for science (in all forms) to be communicated in order to serve social justice (broadly conceived).
A full list of the episodes can be found on our website or on major streaming platforms.
From 2023, we can be commissioned to create a podcast about your research project. If you’d like to explore making a podcast of your own to serve your research project, contact us with your proposal. Listen to our advert for more information.
Sound Matters
Interdisciplinary explorations into audio knowledge production
An online symposium hosted by the SA Research Chair in Science Communication, The Academic Citizen, and the South African Journal of Science.
Convenors: Prof Mehita Iqani and Dr Nosipho Mngomezulu
9 – 10 November 2023, Virtual Symposium.
To access the PDF version, please click here.
Listen to The Academic Citizen hosts speak more about the symposium here.
It begins with sound… coz
In the Beginning was the Acoustics,
A word-hoard hiding in the keyboards.
—Lesego Rampolokeng, The Bavino Sermons
Current technologies offer a plethora of modalities for the dissemination of knowledge. Scholars from across the STEAM fields have expanded the vocabulary for thinking with sound both as an epistemological model, aesthetic practice, and an avenue towards expansion of access. Researchers in science and technology studies (Sterne 2003; Thompson 2002), anthropology (Feld & Brenneis 2004), science communication (Tiffe & Hoffmann 2017, Birch & Weitkamp 2010) and publishing (Llinares, Fox, & Berry 2018) have offered insightful examinations on how we can think with text and audio to disseminate research in an increasingly digital scholarly landscape.
This symposium will explore how the mode of audio offers new possibilities for the dissemination of scientific knowledge. “Sound matters” invites an interdisciplinary conversation to consider how knowledges can be formed, articulated and disseminated through audio, as well as the role audio plays in knowledge production. Audio refers to sound that is recorded, transmitted, or reproduced; acoustic or aural material formalised into a distributable form through technological intervention, directing us towards a mediacentric definition of sound that hinges upon its production into text through technological processes. Taking this specific, media-communications-technology perspective on sound as an orientation point, we ask: how can knowledges be formed, articulated, and disseminated through audio modalities?
Online scholarly publishing has become a norm. Publishers and universities in the global North have seized the opportunity to move with sonic technological advancements, from examining podcast dissertations to welcoming audio components to journal submissions. There is a growing consciousness of audio and its relationship to text, opening exciting collaborations within and across disciplines. Audio can foreground polyvocality and dialogical approaches to research praxis. Sharing scholarly arguments and research findings through audio formats cannot be disentangled from epistemic and methodological enquiries into the role of audio in research. This symposium is equally invested in both the theory and praxis of audio knowledge production and dissemination and aims to explore how an audio modality in research publication can offers new possibilities for the dissemination of academic research.
Please note: we plan for this to be an online event so as to encourage the widest possible participation from colleagues across the country, the continent and the world.
Call for Participation
Researchers and those working in knowledge policy, dissemination and publishing are invited to offer contributions on the following topics (among others to do with audio knowledge that we might not yet have anticipated):
Audio in scientific research
- The ways in which research praxis incorporates audio,
- How audio can be linked to principles of open access, transformation, and ethical research praxis,
- The relationship between audio and other modalities (textual, visual, etc) in scientific research,
- The possibilities and limitations of working with audio in different scientific fields,
- Data and its analysis in audio form.
Scientific research in audio
- Presentation of new empirical findings in audio-recorded talking formats,
- Contributions to theory through conversation, dialogue, interview, or other vocal modalities,
- Experiments in using audio technologies in research method,
- Explorations of how to articulate data through sound (apart from or in addition to the talking formats),
- The possibilities for designing peer-review and publishing modalities in audio.
Contributions from any disciplinary perspective are welcome.
We welcome proposals for presentations of individual or collaborative contributions, panels, or showcases of audio scholarship.
To participate in the symposium please send a short proposal of 300-words and a 100-word bio (in the same document) to fumanim@sun.ac.za or scicomm@sun.ac.za by 9 October 2023. All submitted abstracts will be peer-reviewed. Decisions will be communicated by 31 October 2023. There will be no registration fee for the event. Further details on participation will be communicated to invited speakers.
References
Birch, H., & Weitkamp, E. (2010). Podologues: conversations created by science podcasts. New Media & Society, 12(6), 889-909.
Feld, S., & Brenneis, D. (2004). Doing anthropology in sound. American Ethnologist, 31(4), 461-474.
Llinares, D., Fox, N., & Berry, R. (Eds.). (2018). Podcasting: New Aural Cultures and Digital Media. London: Springer.
Rampolokeng, J. (2019) The Bavino Sermons. Johannesburg: Deep South.
Sterne, J. (2003). The Audible past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction. Durham: Duke University Press.
Thompson, E. (2002). The Soundscape of Modernity: Architectural Acoustics and the Culture of Listening in America, 1900–1933. Boston: MIT Press.
Tiffe, R., & Hoffmann, M. (2017). Taking up sonic space: feminized vocality and podcasting as resistance. Feminist Media Studies, 17(1), 115-118.