Cross-disciplinary Conference Research Articles

Shadow Program Committee: Designing for Diversity and Equity within Academic Communities

The development of early career researchers (ECRs) and their induction into academia has traditionally been a process that is at best obscure, and at worst, cronyism laden. Arguably this is especially true for cross-disciplinary fields like HCI, where relatively fragmented specialisms co-exist. With COVID-19 and its negative impacts on ECRs as the backdrop, we explored the design of a 5-month virtual training program for ECRs worldwide (with particular emphasis on the Global South). Through an action research approach, the program was executed in collaboration with the organizers of a cross-disciplinary conference. Eighty-one participants from 26 countries took part. The program created a collaborative learning experience for attendees and provided opportunities for networking and learning the nuances of the peer-review process. This article details our experiences and provides reflections on design opportunities to (1) develop professional development spaces for underserved researchers, and (2) leverage ECRs’ unique capacity for contributing to inclusive conference spaces.

La Función De La Investigación-Acción En La Transformación Social: Memorias Y Proyecciones

The conference “Coping with the future: Business and Work in the digital age – A cross disciplinary conference” (Agder University, Norway, on October 8-10, 2018) had one section dedicated to “The role of action research in social transformation”. The text contextualises the theme within the trajectory of the International Journal of ActionResearch, and more particularly of the biannual international conferences organised with the support of the journal. It was prepared for opening for the work of this section of the conference, and served as introduction to the presentation of other papers published in this issue.

Rigor mortis and livor mortis in a living patient: A fatal case of acute total occlusion of the infrarenal abdominal aorta following renal surgery

Abstract A 63-year-old woman underwent a nephrectomy on the right side for renal cancer. Postoperatively she developed abdominal and lower back pain, which was treated with an injection of analgesics in an epidural catheter. The following morning it was discovered that the patient had cold legs with pallor and no palpable femoral pulse. Rigor mortis and livor mortis were diagnosed in both legs, even though the patient was still alive and awake. Doppler ultrasound examination revealed the absence of blood flow in the lower part of the abdominal aorta and distally. A cross disciplinary conference including specialists in urology, orthopaedics, vascular surgery, anaesthesiology, internal medicine, and intensive care concluded that no lifesaving treatment was possible, and the patient died the following day. A forensic autopsy revealed severe atherosclerosis with thrombosis and dissection of the abdominal aorta. This case clearly demonstrates that a vascular emergency should be considered when patients complain about pain in the lower back, abdomen or limbs. Clinicians should be especially aware of symptoms of tissue death that can be masked by epidural analgesia.

Introduction: Archives, Memory and Place from the Canberra Perspective

This is an introductory piece to a special section based on a 2013 cross-disciplinary conference on the lived experience of Canberra.

Developing regions: common goals, common problems?

The Seventh W4A International Cross-Disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility was held on Monday 26th and Tuesday 27th May 2010 as part of the Nineteenth International World Wide Web Conference(WWW2010) located at the Raleigh Convention Center in Raleigh, North Carolina, USA. We ran over 2 days, welcomed 69 attendees. We accepted 31.25% of all submissions, each paper was peer reviewed by three members of our programme committee. We published ISBN'ed proceedings as part of the ACM Digital Library, and the best papers have been invited to submit extended versions of their work to Taylor and Francis' New Review of Hypermedia and Multimedia.

The Object in Transition: A Cross Disciplinary Conference on the Preservation and Study of Modern and Contemporary Art

Introduction “Since the middle of the twentieth century, artists have increasingly turned to a variety of new materials and techniques for art making. Many of these materials and techniques have produced objects that alter rapidly in appearance and require some level of intervention to enable their continued display. These works pose strong challenges to the fields of conservation and art history. There is often no codified method for conserving such works; further, the insistent but uneven r...

W4A 2008

The 5 th annual International Cross-disciplinary Conference on Web Accessibility (W4A for short) took place alongside WWW 2008 in Beijing, in April 2008. The conference venue was Beijing's International Convention Centre, next door to the Bird's Nest Olympic Stadium, and given the closeness of the conference - in location and timing - to the world's most famous sporting event, it was fitting that the conference theme looked at how accessibility can be addressed as Web user become more active, as content creators. Our theme was "One World, One Web: Surfers become Designers?

ITunes Is Pretty (Useless) When You’re Blind: Digital Design Is Triggering Disability When It Could Be a Solution

This article critically examines the promise of Internet-based digital technology to open up the world to people with disabilities, and the parallel danger that the social construction of disability in the digital environment will simply come to mirror pre-existing analogue discrimination. This paper explores how technologies and innovations designed to improve access by the disabled actually enhance access for all users. The first part of the paper focuses on ‘Web 2.0’ and digital access for people with disability, particularly those with vision impairment. The online software that drives the iPod and iPhone and exclusively delivers content to these devices is iTunes. While iTunes seems on the surface to provide enormous opportunity for the vision impaired to access a broad selection of audio content, its design actually works to inhibit access to the platform for this group. Apple promotes the use of iTunes in educational settings through the iTunes U channel, and this potentially excludes those who have difficulty with access to the technology. Critically, it is these excluded people who, potentially, could benefit the most from the new technology. We consider the difficulty experienced by users of screen readers and braille tablets in relation to iTunes and highlight the potential problems for universities who seek to utilise iTunes U. In the second part of the paper we reframe disability accessibility as a principle of universal access and design and outline how changes made to assist users with disability can enhance the learning experience of all students using the Lectopia lecture recording and distribution system as an example. The third section of the paper situates these digital developments within the continuum of disability theory deploying Finkelstein’s three stages of disability development. The focus then shifts to the potential of online virtual worlds such as Second Life to act as a place where the promise of technology to mediate for disability might be realised. Goggin and Newell suggest that the Internet will not be fully accessible until disability is considered a cultural identity in the same way that class, gender and sexuality are. This article argues that accessibility must be addressed through the context of design and shared open standards for digital platforms.

The role of the rank and file in police reform

Police departments today are more attractive places than they used to be for experiments in participatory management and other forms of workforce empowerment, but experiments of this kind in law enforcement remain disappointingly rare. The articles in this special issue, drawn from an international, cross-disciplinary conference on ‘police reform from the bottom up,’ highlight the potential benefits of giving rank-and-file officers a larger collective voice in the shaping of their work, as well as some of the difficulties of doing so, and the conditions under which it is most likely to succeed.

Conference on Repatriation of Cultural Heritage: Nuuk, Greenland, February 12 to 15, 2007

From February 12 to 15, 2007, the Greenland National Museum & Archive convened an international and crossdisciplinary conference on repatriation of cultural heritage. Nearly 90 people attended the conference representing more than 20 different states and indigenous peoples. Based on experiences in relation to the recent return of 35,000 archaeological and ethnographic items from Denmark to the Greenlandic Home rule, the aim of the Greenlandic conference was to facilitate dialog and partnership between relevant stakeholders founded on mutual respect and understanding.