Global Digital Geographies: Digitalising the Territorial / Territorialising the Digital

By global digital geographies, we aim to foreground two interconnected dimensions of the global. First, we engage with geography’s long-standing critique of the binary conception of territory and network in the context of globalization—a debate that has gained renewed urgency and complexity with the advent of digitalisation and information technology. Second, we envision this as a global platform for scholarly exchange, bringing together diverse perspectives and insights on these topics from different regions around the world. With that in mind, the online symposium will be organized across three regional sections—Asia, Europe, and Africa—to better accommodate global participation.

Confirmed speakers 

•    Paul C Adams, University of Texas at Austin
•    Azadeh Akbari, University of Twente
•    Jordan Branch, Claremont McKenna College
•    Mirjam de Bruijn, University of Leiden
•    Ayona Datta, University College London
•    Iginio Gagliardone, University of the Witwatersrand
•    Georg Glasze, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität
•    Sam Kinsley, University of Exeter
•    Alexandru-Codru Preda, Lingnan University 
•    Norma Möllers — Queen’s University
•    Carwyn Morris, University of Leiden
•    Luke Munn, University of Queensland
•    Jiang Xu, Chinese University of Hong Kong

Theme and Focus
In 1998, Stephen Graham (1998) posed a provocative question—“The End of Geography or the Explosion of Place?”—to explore how flow-oriented information and communication technologies (ICTs) challenge our conventional understanding of territory. Nearly two decades later, Milton Mueller (2017) raised the opposite question—“Will the Internet Fragment?”—reflecting growing concerns about digital sovereignty and state practices of enclosure, fragmentation, and governance. 

These contrasting perspectives reveal the non-linear evolution of digital geographies—oscillating between flow and fixity, circulation and enclosure (Barabasi, 2002; Glasze et al., 2022; Zhang & Morris, 2023). While early imaginaries of an open and networked world emphasized fluidity and deterritorialization, the recent buzzword "digital sovereignty" exemplifies the assertion of nationalist logic of territory, wherein geopolitical rivalries, regulatory enclosures, and cyber securitization strategies reinforce spatial boundaries even as open data movement proliferates (Glasze et al., 2022; Lambach, 2020; Schindler et al., 2021).

Studies on digitalising the territorial demonstrate how digital technologies transform our society (Van Dijck, 2021; van Dijck et al., 2018), from socioeconomic relations to material landscapes (Luque-Ayala & Neves Maia, 2018; Wang & Tomassetti, 2024). Geospatial technologies (Latour et al., 2010; Leszczynski, 2012; Luque-Ayala & Neves Maia, 2018), drones (Gregory, 2011; Jackman & Brickell, 2021; Yao & Wang, 2024), and computational mapping practices (Atkins, 2021; Woods et al., 2024) not only represent but actively produce territories. These processes operate as sociotechnical assemblages that reshape ethnical, urban, regional, and volumetric spatialities (Adey, 2010; Datta, 2024; Yebra López, 2021).

Conversely, territorializing the digital entails examining how states, corporations, and communities inscribe territorial logic into digital infrastructures, data and prosumer-citizens (Lambach, 2020; Lehdonvirta, 2022; Möllers, 2021). The digital infrastructures --- from cable and data hubs to platforms and prosumer-citizens --- which were initially envisioned to support and channel the open flow of data, may concurrently serve as the very foundation for embodying the ideas of enclosure and demarcation (Lehdonvirta, 2022; Möllers, 2021; Munn, 2023). 

Digital geographies are thus not immaterial or abstract but grounded in terrestrial politics, the operation of which depends on terrestrial resources—metals, energy, and labour—implicated in global extractive economies (Latour, 2011). Such an understanding is crucial for unveiling the patterns of digital neo-colonialism in the Global South (Fraser, 2019; Mouton & Burns, 2021; Tait et al., 2022). A better understanding of digital-territorial dynamics cannot be achieved through an isolated focus on any single region. Instead, it must be situated within a global arena, where practices of “digitalising the territorial” and “territorializing the digital” across different areas and regions can be introduced, discussed, and used to inform conceptual efforts.

This symposium aims to serve as a global platform for such exchanges, emphasizing the importance of scholarly dialogue across diverse parts of the world. We invite papers that investigate the mutually constitutive processes of digitalising the territorial and territorializing the digital, as these unfold across different scales and are shaped by a variety of actors. Contributions are welcome on, but not limited to, the following themes:

•    Digital sovereignty, cybersecurity, and data governance;
•    Digital technologies and their re-presentation of territories;
•    Digital infrastructures;
•    New patterns of territorial development (circulation, logistics, and enclosure ) shaped by digitalization;
•    Techno-nationalism and digital statecraft on all fronts, from the jurisdiction of data and digital infrastructure to citizen-subjects;
•    Ontological approaches to digital territories and (geo)politics.

Call for contributions

Deadline for Abstracts/sessions/digital shorts: 30 April 2025
Notification of Acceptance: 15 May 2025
Symposium Date and Venue: 19-20 June 2025, online 
Symposium Organising Committee of DGRG
June Wang, Tess Osborne, Sammia C Poveda Villalba, Adam Packer, Harrison Smith, Sam Kinsley, Olivia Fletcher

Please submit your abstract to the link below:
https://qualtricsxmn4sh2rv6f.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_9YuL5yhVu5fhhyK