Prof Simeon Yates
Associate Pro-Vice-Chancellor Research Environment and Postgraduate Research
Simeon is Associate Head of School (Research and Impact) and Director of the Centre for Digital Humanities and Social Science. His research on the social, political and cultural impacts of digital media includes a long-standing focus on digital media and interpersonal interaction. More recently, he has worked on projects that address issues of digital inclusion and exclusion and projects that address the use of digital technologies in the context of security and crises — with this work funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), EU and industry. Simeon’s work has often been interdisciplinary and has predominantly involved creative and digital industry partners. He was one of the leads on a major Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) funded interdisciplinary programme (Engineering for Life) while at Sheffield Hallam.
Simeon has been researching the impacts of the internet and new / digital media on language and culture since 1990. His PhD thesis (1993) is a large-scale linguistic comparison of speech, writing and online interaction. Subsequent published work has covered analyses of gender differences in computer-mediated communication (CMC), gender and computer gaming, email and letter writing, science in the mass media and text books on social research methods — in particular, linguistic and discourse analytic methods.
He was previously the Director of the Institute of Cultural Capital, a strategic collaboration between the University of Liverpool and Liverpool John Moores University. He established the Cultural, Communication and Computing Research Institute (C3RI) at Sheffield Hallam University, and has previously worked at the Open University and at the University of Leeds. As well as a background in social science, Simeon has an interest and training in science (geology).
For Beyond the Multiplex, Simeon will lead the development of Socio-Cultural Index and the Longitudinal Survey.
Email: Simeon.Yates@liverpool.ac.uk
Web: https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/communication-and-media/staff/simeon-yates
Dr. Elinor Carmi
Elinor is a Research Associate on the following projects: 1) “Ways of Being Digital” The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) project. 2) “Me and My Big Data – Developing Citizens’ Data Literacies” Nuffield Foundation funded project. 3) The UKRI project “COVID-19: Being alone together: developing fake news immunity“; 4) POST Parliamentary Academic Fellowship working with the UK’s Digital, Culture, Media & Sport Committee on my project: “Digital literacies for a healthy democracy”; 5) The UK’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) Research Working Group on Digital Inclusion and Skills.
Previously, she worked as a Teaching fellow at the Politics & International Relations Department at Royal Holloway. She was a Visiting Lecturer at the Global Media Management M.A. programme at Winchester School of Art and a Visiting Lecturer at the Sound Design B.A. programme at London South Bank University. She was also an Associate Lecturer at the Advertising Department at London College of Communications and at the Media and Communications Department at Goldsmiths.
In addition, she was a radio broadcaster, an editor of Trance channels on Israeli television, and has been working for various electronic music labels for almost a decade. In 2013, she published a book based on her M.A. thesis titled TranceMission: The Psytrance Culture in Israel 1989-1999 (Resling Publishing).
Email: Elinor.Carmi@liverpool.ac.uk Website: https://elinorcarmi.com/.
Twitter: @Elinor_Carmi
Professor Bridgette Wessels
Professor of Sociology in the School of Social & Political Sciences at University of Glasgow and PI of the Beyond the Multiplex project.
Her research focuses on social change, media including digital media and cultural participation. She has extensive research experience in the area of digital culture in a wide range of areas, such as public sphere, the creative and cultural industries, media and new media, e-services, and digital culture in everyday life studies. She is particularly interested audiences and cultural engagement in regional contexts and she is just finishing a project that focuses on regional media in a global media age in Sweden (REGPRESS) as well as research with the Courtauld Gallery on audience engagement and a study of regional film audiences in the North of England.
She has recently finished working on projects that focus on the open data and knowledge society, participatory design for digital research in the early modern newsbooks, mainstreaming telehealth, the role social media in the new dynamics of cultural audiences. She has also just finished working on the relationship between social media and political culture. These foci also involve addressing methodological challenges in terms of working with big data in meaningful ways. Bridgette has undertaken comparative research in Europe that addresses diversity, participation and communication. She has also undertaken research globally in developing countries looking at inclusion and the digital divide.
She has written 6 books including Open Data and the Knowledge society (Amsterdam University Press), Social Change: process and Context (Palgrave, 2014), Understanding he Internet:a socio-cultural perspective( Palgrave). She has published numerous articles and has had research funding from the research councils in the UK as well as European funding. She has been on advisory boards for the EU, UK government, the Association of South East Asia nations, and the Consumer Action Network, Australia, and the EU e-Forum Privacy Group, including the EU ICT–China programme.
Email: bridgette.wessels@glasgow.ac.uk
Web: https://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/socialpolitical/staff/bridgettewessels/
Dr. Eleanor Lockley
Research Fellow and Associate Lecturer
Eleanor is currently a Research Fellow in the Communication and Computing Research Centre (CCRC) at Sheffield Hallam University. Her research focuses around the sociology of communication and digital media: how people make use of and interact with technology and digital media, as well as issues associated with new media and society, digital inclusion and digital and media literacy.
Eleanor has eleven years experience working on interdisciplinary research projects at Sheffield Hallam University (including commercial consultancy through knowledge transfer activity as well as on academic based project work). From providing groups of adult refugee learners with ICT and journalism training and helping to enhance their digital and media skills, to studying digital inclusion in association with Sheffield City Council, these projects have resulted in local community interventions – including setting up computer club’s for people who were otherwise considered to be ‘digitally excluded’.
Her postdoctoral research focused on the social impact of the mobile phone in the public and private. The research specifically concentrated on how people manage contextualised mobile phone use during social interactions in public spaces. It also examined how people make use of their mobile phones to manage their private relationships. Themes throughout the research concerned interaction management, face management, and relationship management and made use of Goffman’s (1959, 1963) concepts of behaviour in public.
In addition to the Nuffield project, Eleanor is working on an EU project entitled CultureLabs (2018-2021) which seeks to develop a platform to support heritage institutions such as libraries, museums and theatres, who wish to work with communities from immigrant, refugees or migrant backgrounds, in order to share cultural heritage and understanding, through co-design. She also has over 14 years of teaching experience and is currently teaching ‘Media Technologies’ and ‘Media Industries’ at SHU.
Past team members
Dr. Alicja Pawluczuk
Dr Alicja Pawluczuk is an expert in youth digital inclusion research and practice. She currently works as an ICTD research fellow at the United Nations University, where her research examines the gender digital divide and girls’ digital inclusion non-formal educational programmes. She is also the Strategic Consultant at the Council of Europe’s Youth Partnership in defining Digital Transformation in the EU Youth Field. Alicja’s research and community education practice focuses on digital, and data inequalities. Through the use of participatory, critical and multidisciplinary approaches, she aims to examine the power dynamics associated with the digital and data divides. Both her community engagement practice and her research are characterised by the use of experimental and interactive methodologies. Over the last 10 years, her work has been responding and changing in accordance with the contexts of the digitalization of society.
Website: https://www.alicjapawluczuk.com/
Twitter: @alicjapawluczuk