Research

My Research Interests:

social media;
digital media;
blogs;
copyright (in particular the Creative Commons and other alternative copyright arrangements)
citizen journalism;
cultural studies;
cybercultures;
embodiment;
film studies;
science fiction;
flexible delivery;
open educational resources (OERs);
social software (including Facebook, Twitter and MySpace);
teaching & learning in higher education.

As you can see, my research interests are broad, but the loosely cohere into four main research areas: [1] artificial subjectivity (which examines the intersection between technology, people, embodiment and the way these intersections plays out in popular culture); [2] participatory pedagogies (which includes teaching and learning in higher education, open educational resources (OER), elearning, flexible delivery, podcasting, web 2.0 tools, and alternative approaches to learning); [3] the tyranny of digital distance (which includes convergence culture, television studies, film studies, and online models of production and distribution, especially from an Australian perspective); and [4] digital culture (which includes participatory culture, blogs, social networking including Facebook, copyright, the Creative Commons and citizen journalism).

The current state of my research projects:-

[1] Artificial Subjectivity

My first major project in this area was completed in 2006 in the form of my doctoral thesis, written at the University of Western Australia in the discipline of English, Communication and Cultural Studies under the supervision of Associate Professor Jane Long. The thesis is entitled ‘Artificialities: From Artificial Intelligence to Artificial Culture – Subjectivity, Embodiment and Technology in Contemporary Speculative Texts’ and in it I investigated how different instances and articulations of ‘the artificial’ are remediated through popular culture, focusing on issues of identity and embodiment, mainly via critical interrogation of speculative texts (where texts means any cultural product: books, films, websites, other new media and so forth). The thesis abstract:

This thesis is an examination of the articulation, construction and representation of ‘the artificial’ in contemporary speculative texts in relation to notions of identity, subjectivity and embodiment. Conventionally defined, the artificial marks objects and spaces which are outside of the natural order and thus also beyond the realm of subjectivity, and yet they are simultaneously produced and constructed by human ideas, labor and often technologies. Artificialities thus act as a boundary point against which subjectivity is often measured, even though that border is clearly drawn and re-drawn by human hands. Paradoxically, the artificial is, at times, also deployed to mark a realm where minds and bodies are separable, ostensibly devaluing the importance of embodiment. Speculative texts, which include science fiction and similar genres across a number of different media, frequently and provocatively deploy ideas of the artificial to interrogate subjectivity, embodiment, spatiality and culture more broadly. In the past two decades the figures of the cyborg and later the posthuman have been the key concepts guiding critical and comparative literary and theoretical studies of speculative texts in terms of the relation between subjects, bodies, technologies and spaces. This thesis builds on these rich foundations in order to situate the artificial in similar terms, but from a nevertheless distinctly different viewpoint. After examining ideas of the artificial as deployed in film, novels and other digital contexts, this thesis concludes that contemporary artificialities act as a matrix which, rather than separating or demarcating minds and bodies or humanity and the digital, reinforce the symbiotic connection between subjects, bodies and technologies.

The thesis structure is five chapters, each focusing on a specific formation of the artificial. The first examines the most recognised trope of artificiality, Artificial Intelligence (AI), as deployed in contemporary science fiction cinema starting with 2001: A Space Odyssey through to the Terminator trilogy. The second chapter focuses on the more recent notion of Artificial Life through a close reading of Greg Egan’s novels Permutation City and Diaspora. The third chapter then takes a more speculative turn, proposing the category of Artificial Space, building on William Gibson’s second trilogy–Virtual Light, Idoru and All Tomorrow’s Parties–mapping an updated concept of cyberspace more clearly connected with living bodies. The fourth chapter similarly proposes the notion of Artificial People, drawing on two parallel discourses: the development of subject-centred digital special effects technology, such as that used in the Lord of the Rings film trilogy; and the unexpected rearticulation of everyday lives and bodies presented in the Matrix trilogy. The final chapter, Artificial Culture, is a case study examining artificialities in the post-September 11th Western cultural climate, focusing on the first two Spider-Man films. The thesis concludes by reinforcing the symbiotic character of artificialities and suggesting future utility of the concept for critical literary and cultural studies projects. By examining the way artificialities are articulated in speculative texts, the thesis ultimately argues that the artificial destabilises rather than defending conceptual boundaries. The artificial points to the inextricable interlinking of subjects, bodies and technologies while simultaneously questioning each of those categories.

My PhD thesis was awarded in 2006, and I am currently working to convert the thesis into a manuscript form for publication. From the thesis I have previously published three papers: ‘Iatrogenic Permutations: From Digital Genesis to the Artificial Other’, Comparative Literature Studies, 41, 3, 2004, pp. 424-435; ‘The Infinite Plasticity of the Digital’: Posthuman Possibilities, Embodiment and Technology in William Gibson’s Interstitial Trilogy‘ , Reconstruction, 4, 3, 2004; and ‘Interstitial Spaces and Multiple Histories in William Gibson’s Virtual Light, Idoru and All Tomorrow’s Parties’, Limina: A Journal of Historical and Cultural Studies, 9, 2003, pp. 118-130.

I also have a chapter in the edited collection Cylons in America: Critical Studies of Battlestar Galactica entitled “Battlestar Galactica & ‘Humanity’s Children’: Constructing and Confronting the Cylons” (abstract here); this was published in 2008.

[2] Participatory Pedagogies

I am exploring emerging trends in participatory culture, social software and citizen media (especially blogs, podcasts, video blogs and wikis) both as platforms for public identity creation and their pedagogical utility. I am particularly interested in the tools which facilitate a more socially-driven world wide web (often dubbed ‘Web 2.0′), and the way those social trends almost organically lead to modes of interaction which are extremely useful in encouraging and facilitating active learning and, indeed, life-long learning and critical thinking. In a nutshell, I’m exploring where participatory culture meets constructivist pedagogy. The role of organisations and alternative copyright approaches such as the Creative Commons is of particular interest in this project; this focus has also led me to become a firm believer in, and advocate for, Open Educational Resources.

From this project thus far you can hear audio recordings (with PowerPoint slides) of two presentations: ‘iPodium: Student Podcasting and Participatory Pedagogies‘ and ‘iTeach, iLearn: Student Podcasting’; you can also watch a video of my talk ‘Building Open Education Resources From the Bottom Up: How Student-Created Open Educational Resources Can Challenge Institutional Indifference‘, presented at the ‘What is “Open Education” and what does it mean for the future of learning? What role can Australia play?’, QUT, Brisbane, 23 September 2008.

[3] The Tyranny of Digital Distance

This project concerns itself with the notion of ‘distance’, playing on Geoffrey Blainey’s notion of the ‘tyranny of distance’ (which he argued meant that the physical distance of Australia from the heart of the English Empire played a fundamental role in shaping Australian culture) and asking what distance means when information and communication can be transmitted almost instantaneously. The first article to appear from this project is entitled Watching Battlestar Galactica in Australia and the Tyranny of Digital Distance and appeared in the journal Media International Australia, in a themed edition on ‘Beyond Broadcasting: TV for the Twenty-first Century’. I presented a talk based on the paper in September 2007 at ‘Thinking Society, Thinking Culture’ symposium.

[4] Digital Media/Digital Culture

The main output from this ongoing research area is my blog, but I have also published one paper thus far, ‘The Blogging of Everyday Life’ which appeared in the journal Reconstruction in 2006.

[Image courtesy of lumaxart; CC BY SA]