Wednesday 23rd November 4.30 – 6pm
Sheffield Institute of Education, Charles Street, room 12-05-08
The Comfort of Screens: Moving into post-digital times
In the wake of the pandemic, screens occupy a Janus-faced presence in our lives. On one side, screens resurrect images of craning necks watching small boxes in zoom meetings and on the other side they rekindle memories of binge-watching our favourite series. A post-digital perspective allows researchers to consider ways that the digital shape our lives, encouraging a greater appreciation and understanding of the ways that technologies pervade everyday lives. Post-digital ways of being and thinking are the lived practices that people engage in all of the time that are often taken-for-granted. In this presentation, I will feature an interview study with 17 people who live on the same crescent who generously shared their thoughts about their screen lives. Applying post-digital theory (Burnett & Merchant, 2020; Macgilchrist, 2021), I will share my initial findings from the interview conversations and invite audience reflections, provocations, and wisdom for their implications.
Biography: Jennifer Rowsell is a Professor of Digital Literacy at the University of Sheffield. Her research interests include multimodal, makerspace and arts-based research with young people; digital literacies research; digital divide work; and, applying posthumanist and affect approaches to literacy research. She has worked and conducted research in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Her most recent co-authored books are: Unsettling Literacies: Directions for literacy research in precarious times (with C. Lee, C. Bailey, and C. Burnett) and Living Literacies (with Kate Pahl).