Kia Ora! I’m a researcher who studies the social and environmental effects of digital technologies. This involves exploring how hardware and software have a range of impacts on people and ecosystems which includes the end users of digital technologies but also encompasses those whose labour or lives are involved in or impacted by the global supply chain necessary for digital cultures and the vast amounts of waste this produces.
While our lives are increasingly mediated, we often don’t have a great understanding of what that involves because infrastructures are designed to be invisible and because the spatial and temporal scales involved are often faster, smaller, larger or longer than humans can easily perceive. Given the importance of digital technology to contemporary society, and the urgency of the ecological crises that are faced today, having a better understanding of the intersections between technology, culture and ecology is an important step towards creating a more equitable future.
Alongside my academic writing I take photographs and make videos, some of which are connected to my writing, and some of which are either for fun or to help out community groups.
This website is a way to share some of my work.
Since 2013 I’ve worked at Massey University in Aotearoa-New Zealand, where I’m currently a senior lecturer in media studies and the media studies program coordinator. My University staff profile can be found here. I am also a co-director of the Political Ecology Research Centre at Massey.
Before moving to Aotearoa I was based in Bristol, UK, where I did a PhD at the University of Bristol and taught and researched for the Digital Cultures Research Centre at the University of the West of England.