Launch of the ‘Postdigital Intimacies’ Network at Coventry University

CPC network

Image credit: Neon Lights by @talescrow on Unsplash.


Monday 16 November 2020

Press contact

Dr Adrienne Evans
adrienne.evans@coventry.ac.uk


The Centre for Postdigital Cultures (CPC) at Coventry University has been awarded funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) for a new network exploring how digital technologies change our understanding of intimacy in the 21st Century.

At a time when most relationships are facilitated through and by digital technologies, the Postdigital Intimacies network argue that society no longer see the ‘real world’ and the ‘digital’ as separate to one another.

Led by CPC’s Dr Adrienne Evans, with Jessica Ringrose at University College London, the network will bring together experts in the fields of digital culture, government representatives, artists, activists and community members to explore the impacts these technologies will have on the future of intimacy.

Through a number of events, conferences, publications and discussion groups, the team will be exploring the evolving meaning of 'intimacy' in the current digital moment. They will be asking important questions such as: how can people build meaningful relationships over long distances and time zones? How do people make sense of their public and private selves? And what does it mean when social media selfies represent who we are as people, revealing the intimate details of where we spend our private time, and who with?

Alongside important insights into how we live well and understand a ‘good life’ shaped by others, the network will address significant issues such as how physical and mental health are informed by these new intimacies, how we cope with the failures and disappointments of intimacy, and how we imagine future intimacies in ways that challenge inequalities

Dr Adrienne Evans, Network Lead

To find out more about the network, contact Dr Adrienne Evans.