The Digital Societies Cafe Episode 1 - Life After Covid
The Digital Societies Café is a podcast series of the Digital Societies research group. The idea for the series was conceived during the first days of the COVID-19 pandemic as a way of documenting and discussing the rapid developments, but also as means of creating and maintaining a sense of community amongst the members of the group. The episodes are inspired by the research, books, and other activities of the guests, and are discussed in a rigorous yet relaxed manner. It is a café, after all.
The baristas of the Digital Societies Café are Raffaello Rossi and Paris Selinas.
The first episode used the recently published book “Life After Covid-19” as its jumping-off point. The editor of the book, Prof Martin Parker, was joined by Prof Richard Owen and Dr Anita Mangan, who have both contributed with a chapter. Our guests talked about the potentially hopeful signs of this challenging period, the ways the pandemic has affected their lives, and the future of higher education.
Dr Anita Mangan is a Senior Lecturer in Organisation Studies. Anita's research is broadly themed around social justice in organisational studies. The main focus of her research is on co-operatives and credit unions as alternative forms of organising.
Richard Owen is a professor in innovation Management in the School of Management, University of Bristol, and one of the Digital Societies leads. Richard is interested in the power of innovation and techno-visionary science to create futures in profound and uncertain ways, how we can engage as a society with those futures and how we can take responsibility for them.
Martin Parker is a professor of organisation studies as well as the lead for the Bristol Inclusive Economy Initiative. His research and writing is aiming to widen the scope of what is usually part of business and management studies, whether in terms of particular sorts of organisations (the circus, the worker co-op, Apollo space programme etc), or ways of representing organising (in art, cartoons, films etc).