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4S Open Panel: Reworking TechnoPower: Everyday Digital Practices in Marginalized Worlds
by Nemer, David (dn6nn) 18 Mar '26

18 Mar '26

Hello everyone, Ashleigh Wade and I are organizing the following 4S open panel and would like to invite you to submit your work. Abstracts (250 words) are due by April 30. For submissions and additional details, please visit: https://www.4sonline.org/accepted_open_panels_toronto.php 234 Reworking TechnoPower: Everyday Digital Practices in Marginalized Worlds This open panel explores how marginalized communities creatively negotiate and contest technoscientific power in everyday digital life. Across distinct geopolitical contexts, this open panel aims to reveal how racialized and gendered subjects confront platforms structured by extractive capitalism, surveillance, and harassment; while simultaneously inventing tactical forms of survival, self-representation, and political participation. The panel foregrounds everyday practices, such as gender masking, women-only online groups, vernacular archives, and smartphone-based documentation, as sites where technoscience is reworked from below. These practices illuminate how hypervisibility and erasure operate together under contemporary regimes of datafication and platform governance, and how users convert mundane tools into infrastructures of care, pedagogy, and counter-public formation. Contributing to STS debates on TechnoPower, the panel reframes technoscientific capitalism not only as a system dominated by wealthy elites and platform monopolies, but also as a terrain of ongoing struggle in which alternative futures are continually prototyped by those most exposed to harm. The papers examine grassroots digital tactics, community infrastructures, feminist and decolonial reappropriations of technology, and methodological innovations for studying technoscience from marginalized standpoints. By centering everyday, mundane acts of digital world-making, this panel advances STS commitments to justice-oriented scholarship and seeks to accelerate interventions in public and policy debates about whose knowledge, labor, and lives shape technoscientific futures. -- David Nemer, PhD Associate Professor, Department of Media Studies Faculty Affiliate, Department of Anthropology Director, Latin American Studies Program University of Virginia Faculty Associate, Berkman Klein Center Harvard University http://dnemer.com http://favela-digital.com<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__favela-2Ddigital.com_&d…> Books: Technology of the Oppressed (MIT Press, 2022), winner of the 2024 Sally Hacker Prize and 2022 Marcel Roche Award. Tecnologia do Oprimido (Editora Milfontes, 2021) Favela Digital: The other side of technology (GSA, 2013)

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Many, Many Machine Agencies: Call for Participation in 4S Open Panel and Edited Book
by Fenwick Mckelvey 18 Mar '26

18 Mar '26

I am re-sharing a call for research-creation works critical engaging with AI (because I had the wrong link). The goal is an edited book and a 4S online workshop. We're looking for applications to the book, and, if interested, to the 4S open panel. Please contact me if you have any questions. ++++ Many, Many Machine Agencies: Call for Participation in 4S Open Panel and Edited Book Where is the artificial intelligence? With AI included in every job talk, abstract commentary, or refrigerator, our edited collection, Many, Many Machine Agencies, challenges contributors to present encounters with many kinds of artificial intelligences in a more curious fashion than the hyped search for the artificial intelligence so far has been able to amass. The book theoretically eschews the instrumentalizing language of artificial intelligence in favour of an open-ended call for more experiential understanding that advances a posthumanistic and materialist method of critical cultural AI through experience design, critical making, and research-creation. We seek contributors for this unusual, edited collection of machine agencies, asking for recipes, instructions, or games that center the problem of agency and interaction and the importance of new kinds of encounters with machines. Constructed, found, or haphazard encounters define our approach rather than any presumed intelligence, utility, or efficacy. This collection brings together agencies that must be worked out through documented interactions rather than named as an a priori aptitude or benchmark. As such, this is a call for all the hybrid maker-thinkers who dabble in different theories of machinic agency including artificial life, digital games, interaction design, robotics, ubiquitous computing, expert systems, virtual life, simulation, and neural networks. Prospective authors are invited to propose recipes for human-machine encounters that actualize machine agencies and intelligences. Many, Many Machine Agencies is a kind of a cookbook for engaging critically with machines, and as such, we take inspiration from celebrated cookbook authors like MFK Fisher who provides recipes and instructions for dishes, while embedding them in a broader biographical and cultural narrative. Certainly, we want to teach readers how to get on cooking with AI, but we also do not want to be too prescriptive in the kind of instructions they dispense. Essentially, the chapter-recipes are descriptive accounts of interactions and experiences that the reader can reproduce for themselves in their own setting, and they provide the pretext for the articulation and understanding that arise from the encounter. An encounter refers to an interaction between humans, machines, and environments. The prompt, for example, can be an encounter, one highly scripted in the history of computing where machines guess/predict what we expect. Often our roles in interactions with machines are prescripted, and we find ourselves reproducing encounters within frames of client/server, sender/receiver, core/periphery. Our book challenges these expectations that are inherited from the instrumentalist logics that curtail stories of other kinds of encounters with machines. Encounters can be simple games, thought experiments with technologies, reflections on artistic praxis that produce agencies in the experience. For more details about the book, see: https://machineagencies.milieux.ca/cfp-mma/ To support the book, we also have a 4S open panel #136 Many, Many Machine Agencies: Recipes for Posthuman-Human Encounters Please submit your abstract for 4S here: https://www.4sonline.org/accepted_open_panels_toronto.php We encourage anyone interested to submit a 250-word abstract. The deadline is 30 April. Please contact me if you have any questions. -- Be good, Fen

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IEEE SmartComp 2026 PhD Forum Call for Contributions
by h-yonekura+ist 18 Mar '26

18 Mar '26

We apologize if you receive multiple copies of this CFP. We would appreciate your help in forwarding this call to colleagues who may be interested. ********************** SmartComp2026 PhD Forum Call for Contributions ************************************** The Ph.D. Forum at SmartComp 2026 provides an excellent opportunity for Ph.D. students to present their work in progress to the scientific community and obtain individual feedback from leading researchers in the field. This forum is intended to provide doctoral students with a platform to interact with established researchers from both academia and industry and get useful guidance on the broader impacts of their research. https://smartcomp2026.unime.it/call-phd-forum/ ***PhD Forum Format*** The Forum will be organized as a workshop co-located with SmartComp. In addition, the Forum will be supplemented by a one-minute-madness session plus a poster session during the main conference, to facilitate extended interaction opportunities between Ph.D. student participants and researchers from academia, industry, and government. During the workshop, senior members of the community will be present to provide constructive technical comments to each attendee. The Forum will provide a working environment for students to refine and practice their presentations, helping them improve communication skills, and to collaboratively develop research ideas for the PhD research and beyond. Special recognition will be given to the most innovative and/or most promising research project(s) presented at the Ph.D. Forum based on the pitch talk, the presented poster, and the discussion with the participants during the poster session. Current Ph.D. students at any stage of their career are encouraged to submit a 3-page extended abstract about their research. Submissions are expected to include motivation of the importance and challenges to the particular problem, and initial results that support either the importance of the research problem or viability of solutions. The abstract should include the author’s name, affiliation and email address. The name of the supervisor should be marked (“supervised by …”) on the paper, under the author’s name. Authors of accepted submissions are expected to participate in-person. The proceedings of the Forum will be included in the proceedings of the main conference. ***Submission Guidelines*** Submissions must be in PDF format, be no more than three pages in length (all included) and adhere to the IEEE two-column conference format (the same format used for paper submissions to SmartComp2026). All manuscripts must be registered and submitted through the EDAS Submission Site at the following link: https://edas.info/N34458 ***Participation*** Authors of accepted submissions are expected to participate in the Ph.D. Forum (a half-day workshop immediately prior to the main conference), and to deliver an elevator pitch and A1 poster presentation for their work during the main program of the SmartComp2026 conference. Participants who are current full-time students are eligible for the student registration fee. However, please note that any other publication in SmartComp—including main conference papers, posters, demos, workshop papers, or work-in-progress submissions—requires at least one author to register at the full rate. If a student planning to attend the PhD Forum is also a co-author of any such publication, and no other co-author is registering at the full rate, the student must register at the full rate and is not eligible for the student rate. Some students will also be able to apply for travel grants (when details are available, they will be published on the SmartComp website). ***Important Dates*** - Submission: 15th April 2026 - Acceptance notification: 20th April 2026 - Camera ready: 30th April 2026 SMARTCOMP 2026 PhD Forum Chairs - Franca Delmastro, IIT-CNR, Italy - Simone Silvestri, University of Kentucky, USA We look forward to your submissions and to welcoming you in Messina, Italy, in June 2026! Sincerely, --------- Haruki Yonekura Publicity and Social Media Co-Chair, IEEE SMARTCOMP 2026 https://smartcomp2026.unime.it/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/ieee-smartcomp/ Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, The University of Osaka, Japan Mobile Computing Laboratory

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Many, Many Machine Agencies: Call for Participation in 4S Open Panel and Edited Book
by Fenwick Mckelvey 17 Mar '26

17 Mar '26

I am sharing a call for research-creation works critical engaging with AI. The goal is an edited book and a 4S online workshop. Please contact me if you have any questions. ++++ Many, Many Machine Agencies: Call for Participation in 4S Open Panel and Edited Book Where is the artificial intelligence? With AI included in every job talk, abstract commentary, or refrigerator, our edited collection, Many, Many Machine Agencies, challenges contributors to present encounters with many kinds of artificial intelligences in a more curious fashion than the hyped search for the artificial intelligence so far has been able to amass. The book theoretically eschews the instrumentalizing language of artificial intelligence in favour of an open-ended call for more experiential understanding that advances a posthumanistic and materialist method of critical cultural AI through experience design, critical making, and research-creation. We seek contributors for this unusual, edited collection of machine agencies, asking for recipes, instructions, or games that center the problem of agency and interaction and the importance of new kinds of encounters with machines. Constructed, found, or haphazard encounters define our approach rather than any presumed intelligence, utility, or efficacy. This collection brings together agencies that must be worked out through documented interactions rather than named as an a priori aptitude or benchmark. As such, this is a call for all the hybrid maker-thinkers who dabble in different theories of machinic agency including artificial life, digital games, interaction design, robotics, ubiquitous computing, expert systems, virtual life, simulation, and neural networks. Prospective authors are invited to propose recipes for human-machine encounters that actualize machine agencies and intelligences. Many, Many Machine Agencies is a kind of a cookbook for engaging critically with machines, and as such, we take inspiration from celebrated cookbook authors like MFK Fisher who provides recipes and instructions for dishes, while embedding them in a broader biographical and cultural narrative. Certainly, we want to teach readers how to get on cooking with AI, but we also do not want to be too prescriptive in the kind of instructions they dispense. Essentially, the chapter-recipes are descriptive accounts of interactions and experiences that the reader can reproduce for themselves in their own setting, and they provide the pretext for the articulation and understanding that arise from the encounter. An encounter refers to an interaction between humans, machines, and environments. The prompt, for example, can be an encounter, one highly scripted in the history of computing where machines guess/predict what we expect. Often our roles in interactions with machines are prescripted, and we find ourselves reproducing encounters within frames of client/server, sender/receiver, core/periphery. Our book challenges these expectations that are inherited from the instrumentalist logics that curtail stories of other kinds of encounters with machines. Encounters can be simple games, thought experiments with technologies, reflections on artistic praxis that produce agencies in the experience. For more details about the book, see: https://ebauche.facil.services/form/#/3/form/view/b4c188787c12116a94c3019f1… To support the book, we also have a 4S open panel #136 Many, Many Machine Agencies: Recipes for Posthuman-Human Encounters We encourage anyone interested to submit a 250-word abstract. The deadline is 30 April. Please contact me if you have any questions. -- Be good, Fen

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CfP: Instant Messaging as Political Communication Infrastructure – ECREA 2026 Pre-conference (Brno, 7 Sept)
by Bühling, Kilian 17 Mar '26

17 Mar '26

Dear colleagues, We invite submission proposals for our full-day pre-conference at ECREA 2026: Instant Messaging as Political Communication Infrastructure 7 September 2026 at the Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic Instant messaging platforms — WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Viber — have become critical yet under-theorized sites for political communication, civic mobilization, and everyday governance. This pre-conference brings together scholars to advance theoretical frameworks and methodological approaches for studying these platforms. We organize submissions around two tracks: Track 1 – Pro-Democratic Political Communication Grassroots civic organizing, social movements, democratic protest, political discourse, campaigns, and research ethics. Track 2 – Anti-Democratic Political Communication Conspiracist and extremist networks, hate speech, authoritarian uses of instant messaging, populist campaigns, and challenges for democratic public spheres. We welcome original research, theoretical, and methodological papers, as well as methodological toolkits and data repositories. Submission guidelines - Proposals: 1,000–1,500 words - Submission deadline: 15 May 2026 - Notification of acceptance: 12 June 2026 - Full CfP and submission: https://bit.ly/IMPolComm Format: The day combines parallel presentation sessions (pro- and anti-democratic tracks), roundtable discussions on conceptual frameworks, and a methodological workshop in working-table format (data collection tools, ethics, multimodal analysis). Networking drinks to follow. Registration fees: ECREA members €40 | Non-members €60 | PhD students (ECREA members) €25 For questions, contact: o.pasitselska(a)rug.nl<mailto:o.pasitselska@rug.nl> We look forward to your submissions and to seeing you in Brno! Best, Kilian Buehling on behalf of Olga Pasitselska, Qinfeng Zhu, Eedan Amit-Danhi, and Emilija Gagrčin Universität Tübingen / Weizenbaum Institute | University of Groningen | University of Bergen -- Dr. Kilian Buehling Postdoctoral Research Associate Institute for Research on Far Right Extremism (IRex) University of Tübingen | Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society Recent publications: Buehling, K., Becker, J. D., Zhang, X., & Heft, A. (2025). Rechte Verschwörungstheorien in hyperparteiischen Medien – Was hätte ein Verbot des Compact-Magazins für das antidemokratische Online-Ökosystem bedeutet?. Wissen schafft Demokratie, 18/2026: Demokratiegefährdung online. https://doi.org/10.19222/202618/06 Schulze, H., Buehling, K., & Zehring, M. (2025). The Telegram COVID-19 Protest Dataset 2020-2022. Computational Communication Research, 7(1), 1. https://doi.org/10.5117/CCR2025.1.9.SCHU Buehling, K., Zhang, X., & Heft, A. (2025). Veiled conspiracism: Particularities and convergence in the styles and functions of conspiracy-related communication across digital platforms. New Media & Society, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448251315756 Pasitselska, O., Buehling, K., & Gagrčin, E. (2025). Chat groups as local civic infrastructure: A case study of “Solidary neighborhood help” Telegram groups during the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany. New Media & Society, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448251349426

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4S Call: Housing, property, and technoscientific capitalism
by Pelle G Tracey 17 Mar '26

17 Mar '26

Hello AoIR! Please consider submitting to a 4S open panel Erin McElroy and I are organizing, "Housing, property, and technoscientific capitalism." 250 word abstracts are due April 30th. Submissions and further details: https://www.4sonline.org/accepted_open_panels_toronto.php. Full panel description: Housing is an essential yet fraught feature of modern life. If a house is “a machine for living in” (Le Corbusier 1931), we might think of housing as an infrastructure for living, complete with complex and varied relationships to power, capital, and histories of violence and exclusion. Increasingly, the process of finding, renting, buying, living in, or being forced out of, housing, is mediated through platform firms and algorithmic governance. Screening tools automatically deny “problematic” tenants; rents and home prices are dictated by coordinated, collusive systems; and governments allocate ever-insufficient emergency housing through quantifying human suffering. Wherever one looks, technoscientific capitalism and its attendant practices, discourses, and artifacts creep further into our most intimate spaces, our homes. This panel aims to draw together researchers in Science and Technology Studies and adjacent fields whose work focuses on understanding these dynamics and plotting strategies for resisting them. We welcome submissions at the intersections of housing, property, and technoscience conceived broadly, including but certainly not limited to, works along themes of: - ‎Assetization and rentiership (Birch 2020; Cooper 2024) - ‎The “uneven, gendered, and racialized labor formations” that underpin landlord technology and platform real estate, and give lie to its promise of a frictionless experience (McElroy 2024) - ‎Histories of property innovation, and racialized accumulation and dispossession (Fields 2024) - ‎Shared, informal, and non-normative housing arrangements (Maalsen 2023) - ‎Proptech as surveillance infrastructure (Sadowski 2022) - ‎Gendered or patriarchal impacts of tech on social reproduction and the home space (Sharma 2017) - ‎Commercial real estate, data centers, and “landlords of the internet” (Greene 2022) - ‎Precarious care labor in senior, subsidized, supportive, or shelter housing (Tracey & Garcia 2024) Many thanks! Pelle Pelle G. Tracey, PhD (he/him) Assistant Professor, Information School University of Washington ptracey(a)uw.edu

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Modeling and Analyzing User Behavior and Decision-Making in Social Networks - University of Manchester
by Kitty Lo 17 Mar '26

17 Mar '26

A single post can shift a conversation. A single user can change the direction of a whole community. Online, these small moments add up fast — and they shape how we think, act, and make decisions together. Our next Digital Trust and Security Seminar looks at these hidden patterns inside social networks. Dr Tao Wen will guide us through how ideas spread, how influence moves from person to person, and how we can even trace where a piece of information began. The concepts are deep, but he explains them with clear, simple examples that make the science feel intuitive. What the session explores * How people make decisions as part of a network, not in isolation * How certain users can accelerate the spread of information * How to identify the starting point of an information cascade * Why these behaviours matter for trust, safety, and digital society Event details Date: Thursday, May 7, 2026 Time: 1 pm – 3 pm GMT Location: University of Manchester campus Digital Trust and Security Seminar: Dr Tao Wen Free registration: https://tinyurl.com/2k2bk6hs Talk title: Modeling and Analyzing User Behavior and Decision-Making in Social Networks Dr Tao Wen is a Research Fellow in AI Trust and Security at Alliance Manchester Business School. His work sits at the intersection of network science, decision analytics, and collective behaviour — and he brings these topics to life in a way that’s engaging and accessible. This seminar is ideal for anyone curious about how ideas move through digital spaces and how online communities shape the world around us. Free registration: https://tinyurl.com/2k2bk6hs Kind regards, Kitty kitty.lo(a)manchester.ac.uk<mailto:kitty.lo@manchester.ac.uk> | Communications and Engagement Coordinator | Research Platforms Team - Digital Futures<http://www.digitalfutures.manchester.ac.uk/> | The University of Manchester | Pronouns (She/her) Christie Building | The University of Manchester | Oxford Road | M13 9PL Sign up to the Digital Futures newsletter here - https://tinyurl.com/digitalfuturesuom

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CfP Conference: "Utopias and dystopias of the digital society"
by Christian Strippel 17 Mar '26

17 Mar '26

Dear colleagues, In September 16–18, 2026, the Weizenbaum Institute in Berlin hosts the conference "Utopias and dystopias of the digital society: 30 years of research on computer-mediated communication,“ organized in cooperation with the Institute for Media and Communication Studies at Freie Universität Berlin. The focus of the conference is the exploration of imagined, anticipated, or even feared futures, both past and present, within our research fields. Submissions for the conference theme can therefore address the following topics: The history of digital technologies and their scientific research (international and national); Past and present projections of the future—utopias and dystopias—in relation to the connection between digital technologies and societies, their conditions of emergence, ideological foundations, and social negotiations; The role of visions of the future and imaginaries in shaping concepts and theoretical frameworks within the field of digital communication; Theories and methods for conceptualizing and researching digital futures. Please find the Call for Papers attached to this email. Submissions are possible via ConfTool <https://www.conftool.net/digikomm2026>. Submission deadline is March 30, 2026. We are looking forward to your submissions! If you have any questions, please let us know. Best greetings, Christian Strippel -- Weizenbaum Institute, Berlin (Germany) Group Lead "Weizenbaum Panel" and "MethodsLab" https://www.weizenbaum-institut.de/en/portrait/p/christian-strippel/ https://panel.weizenbaum-institut.de/en/ https://methodslab.weizenbaum-institut.de/ Recent Publications: – Ethics of Data Work: Principles for Academic Data Work Requesters <https://www.weizenbaum-institut.de/media/Publikationen/Weizenbaum_Discussio…> – Weizenbaum Report 2025: Political Participation in Germany <https://doi.org/10.34669/wi.wr/6.1> – Data, archives, and tools: Introducing new publication formats on infrastructures and resources <https://doi.org/10.1007/s11616-023-00806-7> – “The Boundaries are Blurry…”: How Comment Moderators in Germany See and Respond to Hate Comments <https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1461670X.2021.2017793> – From Insult to Hate Speech: Mapping Offensive Language in German User Comments on Immigration <https://www.cogitatiopress.com/mediaandcommunication/article/view/3399>

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Three PhD Positions in AI, Digital Culture and Deep Learning
by Tobias Blanke 17 Mar '26

17 Mar '26

Dear all. The new European Research Council-funded Advanced Grant ‘Deep Culture - Living with Difference in the Age of Deep Learning’ invites applications for three fully-funded PhD positions in Amsterdam. Collaborating with two PostDocs, the aim is to realise an ambitious interdisciplinary research agenda on deep learning and culture. Deep learning technologies like ChatGPT have generated a lot of excitement about our new relations with AI but have also provoked much public anxiety. The project coins ‘deep culture’ to describe the global cultural transformations brought about by deep learning, and how culture is key to deep learning. The project will first explore the relations between deep learning and historical-cultural concepts and practices. Secondly, it will work with deep-learning methods to address their limitations for critical analysis. Finally, it aims to foster public understanding of deep learning’s global relations to culture. We are looking for three talented, ambitious PhD candidates who can combine independent research with team collaboration. You will have the opportunity to explore exciting questions of contemporary digital culture and deep learning and contribute to shaping debates about our relations with AI technologies. For further details and a link to apply, please visit: https://vacatures.uva.nl/UvA/job/Three-PhD-Positions-in-AI%2C-Digital-Cultu… All best, Tobias

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3rd WIP-Workshop in Digital Sociology (online)
by Zenkl, Thomas (thomas.zenkl＠uni-graz.at) 17 Mar '26

17 Mar '26

Hi everyone, Please consider joining us online for the 3rd work-in-progress workshop in Digital Sociology on March 18th and 19th! Seven early-career researchers will present and discuss their papers to get feedback from established researchers and peers. The workshop is organized by the early-career-network in the "Digital Sociology" Working Group (WG10) of the International Sociological Association (ISA). To join us please register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/3rd-wip-workshop-tickets-1983770462856 Full Program (all times are UTC): March 18th * 14:00 Sharika Parmar, FLAME University, India Studying the Digital: Interdisciplinary Explorations of Methodologies for Researching Digital Archiving/Remembering in South Asia * 15:00 Marvin Waibel, University of Vienna, Austria AI Companions and the Communicative Construction of Agency * 16:00 Rodrigo Meirelles, School of Public Health, University of São Paulo, Brazil Telemedicine in the Brazilian Unified Health System (SUS): What the Brazilian Experience Reveals About Digital Transformations of Medical Care? * 17:00 Larissa Dantas Oliveira, IFB / UnB, Brazil Controlled Reading: Platformization, Algorithmic Mediation, and the Reading Experience * 18:00 Frédérique Roy, Université de Montréal, Canada Sketching the Surveillant Assemblage: Lived Experiences of (Digital) Surveillance Among Climate and Environmental Justice Activists March 19th * 08:00 Deanna Holroyd, Akita International University, Japan The Digital Flâneur: A Feminist Methodology for Social Media and Digital Platform Ethnography * 09:00 Marion Neunkirchner, Bertha von Suttner Private University / FH St. Pölten, Austria Prison by Numbers: Measuring Security and Rehabilitation Between Gradual Change and Organizational Resistance _____________________ Thomas Zenkl, MA MSc (er/ihm) | (he/him) Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter | Research Assistant Institut für Soziologie | Department of Sociology Universität Graz | University of Graz

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