Teaching
My passion is to engage students in considering how theory, research and practice interact with each other, whether in interpersonal communication, mass media or in social media environments. An overall goal in teaching is to challenge students to identify how media impact on social relationships and the evolution of social institutions in late modernity, with respect to justice issues, such as the voice of women, and indigenous and migrant peoples in public life.
I tend to shy away from teaching styles that treat students as blank slates. I feel more comfortable in environments where students feel free to interrupt the teacher with their own opinions on topics discussed. I try my best to employ a variety of methods to illustrate topics and points of view, including audiovisual materials. Subject to department policy, I like to maintain conversations with students outside of teaching hours, through online discussion groups, blogs and email, with the main aim of preparing students for more formal learning and discussion in the classroom. I have been both criticised and praised for appearing not to take teaching too seriously, by using humour in class presentations, and encouraging students to talk freely. Yet course satisfaction surveys have shown students recognise how hard I work to make courses as interesting as they are informative.
Teaching interests
Intercultural communication
I would propose to introduce models for considering how communication is determined by the interplay of cultural histories and social environments. Intercultural issues in both interpersonal and wider forms of communication would be explored. I would propose to encourage students to identify cultural groupings in their local area, and use their knowledge as examples for study.
Qualitative research methods
I can offer key instructions on creating ethnographic studies to approach appropriate research questions, with a particular bent on online ethnography. I can also offer methods of inquiry into language and discourse for the study of cultural identity.
Culture, media and power
I would propose to introduce examples from the works of Foucault, Volosinov, Fairclough and others in the theorising of power as not just the exertion of will from one to another, but as a social good that is exchanged between people in interactive settings. This would be a framework for the study of power in relation to mediated cultural environments.
The Other in communication theory
This course endeavours to expose students to what may have been considered “marginal voices” in the analysis and critique of communication theory. The course will introduce students to the place of multicultural/ethnocentric debates, feminist and queer perspectives in communication theory. A focus on participation of the “other” voice in international and intercultural communication will be present. Students who complete this course will have insight into how mainstream understandings about communication in culture are ideologically challenged and negotiated by other voices, and the place of these debates in the use of mediated cultural symbols and text in the construction of cultural identities.
New media and society
This course will focus specifically on thinking critically about the role of new media in the construction of personal identities, relationships and the formation of communal identities, and introduce key debates in ethics, politics and economics of new media. By the end of the course students will have explored and be able to formulate a researched opinion on the impact of new media on issues of personal privacy and public engagement, copyright and ownership of cultural goods, interpersonal communication and the formation of networks, and moral panics about new media’s impact on adolescent development, relationships and family life, and civic participation. A convergence study will assist students in understanding of the social and political factors that have shaped the technologies that in turn shape the world of new media.
Religion online
This course will explore the interplay between religion, culture and technology in the changing place of religion in public and personal lives in recent years. An overview of religious attitudes towards Internet use will be introduced as a way of considering the “religious construction of technology”. A short history of research into religion online will also be a component of the course. More importantly, students will be challenged to consider how being online is, for many, a religious exercise as much as it is a cultural pursuit, and therefore will study the negotiations between being online and being religious in the formation of cultural identities. In sum, students will develop the capacity to undertake investigations into the religious lives of digital natives.