Tema T’s research group ‘Values’ organized an international and interdisciplinary conference on ‘Imposters and Gatecrashers’ on 13/15 June 2018.”From bots posing as humans, to scientific fraud and migration border control; the cases explored at the workshop revealed that imposturing is not just about deception, mistaken identity or fakery: the appearance of an imposter creates a destabilising disruption of the social situation, which is revealing and which does not easily resolve.
The conference examined the figure of the imposter across a range of areas. It did so through investigating cultural tropes, technologies and situations in which passing or gatecrashing emerge as central (analytical) themes. The aim of the workshop was to explore: what insights can these shadowy figures provide into the social relations and cultural forms in the communities and social settings in which they emerge? How might ‘thinking with imposters’ be a useful tool of analysis in the social sciences and humanities?
Papers presented
Malcolm Ashmore, Loughborough University
Olga Restrepo, Universidad Nacional de Colombia
Imitations of Celebrity
Mandy Merck, Royal Holloway University of London
“Benefit Scroungers”, “Real” Scroungers, and the Genuine Claimant: Discerning Imposture and Performing Entitlement in UK Welfare-to-Work
Programmes
James Kaufman, University of Glasgow
Spirit Possessions in Candomblé
Mattijs van de Port, University of Amsterdam
The Art of Faking: The Imposture Figure in North American Literature and Culture
Caroline Rosenthal, Friedrich-Schiller-Universität
Automated and/or Authentic Intimacy: Socialbots as Imposters on Infidelity Sites?
Katherine Harrison, Lund University & University of Copenhagen,
Fredy Mora Gamez, Linköping University
Fake Science
Maarten Derksen, University of Groningen
When ‘Fake’ is a Feeling: Thinking with Imposters via the ‘Imposter Syndrome’
Catelijne Coopmans, Linköping University
