ACT

The research project “Ageing, Communication, Technologies (ACT): Experiencing a Digital World in Later Life” which is funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada investigates transformations of experiences of ageing and of information and communication technologies. ACT is directed by primary investigator Dr. Kim Sawchuk (Concordia University, Montreal) and brings together an international expert consortium in the areas of cultural aspects of aging, communication, and technology studies. The main focus of the project is on studying “digital ageism”, biases creating inclusion and exclusion, and their effects in a digitalized world. Besides analyzing this phenomenon, the project will also provide strategies for change in this context.

The Center for Inter-American Studies is represented in the project consortium through the European Network of Aging Studies. C.IAS Director Prof. Dr. Roberta Maierhofer is participating in ACT as Collaborator, Assistant Professor Dr. Ulla Kriebernegg as Affiliated Researcher and PhD candidate Barbara Ratzenböck as Student Representative in the project consortium.

For more information on ACT, please take a look at the official ACT project website: www.actproject.ca

Guest Lecture by ACT researcher Murray Forman at the Center for Inter-American Studies

Collaboration with ACT takes place in a variety of ways. One of the most recent joint events was a guest lecture at C.IAS by Prof. Dr. Murray Forman, Co-Applicant of ACT, in March 2015.

Murray Forman is Associate Professor in Media and Screen Studies at Northeastern University, USA. He studies media and culture with a primary focus on popular music. For over twenty years he has engaged in research about hip-hop culture, contributing to the emerging field of hip-hop studies. Professor Forman is an inaugural recipient of the Nasir Jones Hip-Hop Fellowship at the Hip-Hop Archive, the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, Harvard University (2014-2015).

His well-attended C.IAS guest lecture was entitled “Old in the Game: Age and Aging in Hip-Hop” and focused on  hip-hop elderscapes. While hip-hop is commonly associated in many mainstream contexts with youth practices and tastes, it has been a long time indeed since it could easily be defined as a facet of youth culture; generational turbulence abounds within contemporary hip-hop. Professor Forman critically examines the ways in which the past (as lore, tradition, and legacy) is constructed and understood in contemporary hip-hop and illuminates the manner in which individuals of different ages interact with one another according to multiple factors relating to experience and familiarity, rules, laws, and wider cultural norms as well as established hip-hop conventions. By focusing on an alternative cartography of age and aging he offers new perspectives on the character and representation of hip-hop elderscapes.

You can watch Prof. Dr. Murray Forman’s lecture here. http://actproject.ca/murray-forman-on-old-in-the-game-age-and-aging-in-hip-hop-at-the-university-of-graz/)

Project staff at the University of Graz:
Roberta Maierhofer, Ulla Kriebernegg, Barbara Ratzenböck

www.actproject.ca