Tag: mobile media

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#Everest: Mobile media and mobile livelihoods in the Mt Everest tourism industry – Project launch

Friday 2 August, 3.00pm – 4.30pm

MECO Seminar Room, S226, John Woolley Building A20, University of Sydney

RSVP via Eventbrite

In the wake of the Mount Everest avalanches of 2014 and again in 2015 due to the Nepal earthquake, the Nepali state government and private telecommunications corporations have made a committed effort to increase digital connectivity in the largely remote and underdeveloped Khumbu region. This recently improved mobile infrastructure has coincided with an increase in the number of tourists arriving in the region between 2016 and 2018 and the increase in tourists has influenced the demand for workers in the region’s tourist industry. This paper discusses a research agenda for a wider ethnographic study that brings together research in transnational migration, lifestyle mobilities and travel to investigate the relationship between mobile media in shaping the meanings of Everest and its impact on the routine practices of minority workers. The wider project explores emerging digital practices as they are unfolding in these initial years of the growth of telecommunications infrastructure in the Everest region.

Jolynna Sinanan is Research Fellow in Digital Media and Ethnography at the University of Sydney. She has an interdisciplinary background in anthropology and development and her research focusses on digital media practices in relation to regionally comparative mobilities, family relationships, work and gender. Her books include Social Media in Trinidad (UCL Press, 2017), Visualising Facebook (Miller and Sinanan, UCL Press, 2017) and Webcam (Miller and Sinanan, Polity, 2014).

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De-/Re-Constructing home – Maren Hartmann, University of Arts, Berlin

Friday 29 March, 2019, 3.00pm – 4.30pm

MECO Seminar Room, S226, John Woolley Building A20, University of Sydney

RSVP via Eventbrite

De-/Re-Constructing home: Notions of home and homelessness in times of mobile media

One of the always-taken-for-granted, but yet again constantly shifting concepts within media and cultural studies is the home. Maren Hartmann’s talk aims to unpack and map different understandings of the notion of home – both in media studies and beyond, but also in terms of both ontological and epistemological aspects. Four main – and rather diverse – foci shall serve to aid this mapping process: a) a (brief) feminist take on the household and home; b) a definition of home in the context of homelessness; c) the (media studies) concept of domestication and d) the home button. Next to often taking the notion and existence of home for granted, we often rely on “being-at-home” for our well-being and our identity-formation. In times, however, where insecurities seem once again on the rise, we need to take a new look at the interconnection between home and being-at-home. Drawing on work on homelessness, this talk proposes the concept of homing – making oneself at home in diverse ways. It also addresses the question what role media can play therein.

Maren Hartmann is professor of communication and media sociology at the University of Arts (UdK) in Berlin, Germany. She has worked at universities in the UK, Belgium and Germany and been a visiting scholar in Denmark and Sweden. In 2019, she is a Visiting Scholar in the SLAM Department of Media and Communications. Her work has four main foci: media and time; appropriation, esp. domestication; media and mobilities; home & homelessness. She has published widely in these fields. Maren is also involved in international organizations (Academiae Europeana, the German DGPuK and ECREA) and a regular guest at international conferences. 

Discussant:

Justine Humphry is a Lecturer in Digital Cultures in the Department of Media and Communications at the University of Sydney. Her previous appointments include Lecturer in Cultural and Social Analysis at Western Sydney University and Research Fellow in Digital Media at the University of Sydney.