Welcome to registration for AusSTS 2025. Given the high volume of excellent applications, the conference is at capacity. Unless you are registering for Day 1 at the NCM only, we ask that, for now, you only register if you have received an email of acceptance.
Thanks to generous support from the ARC Centre for Automated Decision-Making and Society (ADM+S) and fantastic new National Communication Museum (NCM) we warmly welcome all attendees to the first day of the conference at the National Communication Museum. Day 1 will open with a Welcome to Country, and include a keynote panel on infrastructures of noise with Dang Nguyen (RMIT), Ranjodh Dhaliwal Singh (University of Basel), Kate Mannell (Deakin), and Fabian Offert (University of California, Santa Barbara). A series of workshops and activities that draw on the creative archives, exhibitions and interactive spaces in the NCM will follow. The day will end with art performances and a programme including Eryk Salvaggio, Rowan Savage and further international artists (to be announced soon!).
Day 2 and 3 will take place at Deakin Downtown in Docklands. We look forward to a keynote on technologies of reproduction by Elizabeth Stephens (University of Queensland), in discussion with Jaya Keaney (University of Melbourne), to kick off a day of presentations, pre-submitted paper workshops, and ‘Making and Doing’ sessions, which will include posters and short, timed tours where presenters will have time to introduce their installations. Participants also have the opportunity to sign up for meet-ups on the evening of Day 2.
The keynote for day 3 on noise within health includes Warwick Anderson (University of Sydney), Kari Lancaster (University of Bath), and Christopher O’Neill (Deakin).
All conference attendees are expected to read 1- 3 pre-submitted papers of up to 3000 words each, which will be circulated two weeks before the conference.
Please keep a look out for companion events and more details to be advertised on our website.
Meet-ups
In the order form after registration, you will be asked if you wish to attend a meet up on Thursday evening. These are not organised by the committee, but by persons below, who will reach out to you with more information.
HDR meet-up, organised by Susan Barnes and Jennifer Wilson
Join our meetup to connect with other postgraduate students attending the conference. This catchup aims to build new connections for collegiality, comfort, and complaining! All HDRs welcome.
Queer STS meet-up, organised by Suisui Wang
This meet-up gathers folks committed to working within or interested in working with queer STS. Queerness is understood broadly and capaciously here, as an object of inquiry, a theoretical toolkit, or an analytic sensibility. You could be an STS scholar explicitly researching sex, gender, sexuality, and queer and trans lifeworld. Or you may be an STS analyst working in adjacent fields drawing from queer, trans, and crip theories. Or you might be a practitioner informed by queer ethos of improper objects and unorthodox uses and thus doing STS queerly. Regardless, this meet-up hopes to cultivate space for these perverse connections.
Water STS meet-up, organised by Alexandra Crosby and Michaela Spencer
Calling all researchers interested in watery signals and noises. Like signal and noise, water and infrastructure are intimately and iteratively bonded in their material production, reception and translation. A creek is a stormwater drain. A dam is a catchment. A swamp is a songline. How to communicate and care for water in its vibrant multiplicity remains a challenge for STS. We invite scholars who are interested in the communication and voicing of water-places to join us and share ideas and challenges in this friendly meetup.
Fees, membership and registration
The organisers have worked hard to keep registration affordable across tiers, and free for Indigenous people. Registration includes tea and lunch on each day of the conference, but does not include transport. Entrance to the NCM and the Signal to Noise exhibition is included for Day 1.
A $10 AusSTS membership fee is included in each registration (barring day 1 only tickets). This grants membership to the newly formed AusSTS association from AusSTS 2025 until the AusSTS conference in 2026. Our first members meeting will be held on Day 3 of the conference.
Getting to the conference
Narrm/ Melbourne
For international and regional visitors who are flying, we recommend landing at Melbourne Tullamarine airport. If you are staying in or near the city, the Skybus is the most easy and affordable way to get to the city. Like regional buses and trains, it terminates at Southern Cross station, a 10 minute walk from Deakin Downtown.
Public transport in Narrm is well-connected. To travel by train, tram or bus to the NCM you will need a Myki Card (about $6 per card), which can be purchased at Southern Cross and most train stations. Fares are $5.50 a trip, but are free within the free tram zone in the city.
International participants who require letters of invitation for visas should let us know asap by writing to ausstsgrad@gmail.com.
Day 1: The National Communication Museum, Hawthorn
Address: 375 Burwood Road, Hawthorn.
View on Google maps
The venue is easily accesible via train to Glenferrie station. Trams 70/75 and109 each intersect tram 16, which runs the length of Glenferrie road. There isn't much free all-day parking nearby, but there are options to pay for parking nearby.
Day 2 and 3: Deakin Downtown, Docklands
Address: Tower 2, level 12/727 Collins St, Melbourne VIC 3008
View on Google Maps
Deakin Downtown is on Collins street, which is a 5 minute walk from Southern Cross train Station, and on the 109, 11, 12 and 48 trams routes. Enter the Collins street tower 2, and go up the escalator to the sky lobby, where you can search for Deakin on the lift access pad. Scroll to the bottom of this page for detailed directions to the Downtown space, as well as mobility access information.
Sponsors
Signals & Noises is sponsored by ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making & Society (ADM+S); National Museum of Communication, Deakin Science and Society Network and Science, Technology, & Human Values.
