Role

Dr Aristea Fotopoulou is postdoctoral Research Fellow working at the intersections of media & cultural studies with science & technologies studies. She is interested in critical aspects of digital culture, emerging technologies and social change, in network politics, and queer theory.

She is based at the Centre for Material Digital Culture, Department of Media and Film, University of Sussex, working on the project EPINET Integrated Assessment of Societal Impacts of Emerging Science and Technology from within Epistemic Networks (FP7-SCIENCE-IN-SOCIETY-2012- European Commission). The Sussex strand of the project is led by Dr Kate O’Riordan and it is a media analysis of three emerging technologies – smart grids, wearable sensors and in-vitro meat.

Fotopoulou also works with Prof Nick Couldry at the University of London, Goldsmiths College (Department of Media and Communications) in the research project Storycircle (Framework for Innovation and Research in MediaCityUK (FIRM). This is an action research project which examines narrative processes and digital media.

She is Research co-investigator (with Dr Kate O'Riordan) in the project Sustaining networked knowledge: expertise, feminist media production, art and activism, funded by the Digital Economy ‘Communities and Culture’ Network+. The network brings together feminist cultural production, art and activist practices and enables exchanges between different researchers, activists, artists and dimensions of community. It aims to produce a sustainable co-created platform for critical and creative conversations about digital engagement.

During the academic year 2012-13 she was involved in the Horizon Scoping Study Digital expertise, literacy and knowledge funded by the Digital Economy Communities and Culture Network+/EPSRC, led by Dr Caroline Bassett. This project considers questions of digital literacy and, more broadly, questions of digital engagement and the kinds of expertise that are necessary to access/enable engagement (See Scoping study report for the Digital Economy ‘Communities and Culture’ Network+ (CCNetwork+): Literacy, Expertise & Knowledge Scoping Report).

Aristea completed her PhD in Media and Cultural Studies at Sussex with Dr Caroline Bassett and Dr Kate O'Riordan. Her thesis 'Remediating Politics: feminist and queer formations in digital networks' examines the conditions that constitute foreclosures or possibilities for feminist and queer politics in digital environments today. It addresses a series of vital questions regarding ideas of materiality, technology, representation and mediation. Fotopoulou's earliest work explored blogs of disabled women, and methodological issues in queer studies and intersectionality.

SELECTED RESEARCH AWARDS, FELLOWSHIPS & PRIZES

• 2014 RCUK Digital Economy NEMODE +, Tracking biodata for research purposes: ownership and sharing (P.I.).
• 2014 Visiting scholar, Research Center Science and Justice, University of Santa Cruz
• 2013 EPSRC/ CCN+, SusNet - Sustaining Networked Knowledge: Feminist Media, Art and Activism, Research Co-Investigator, with Kate O'Riordan (P.I.)
• 2010 FWSA shortlisted Essay Awards.

For more information please visit the research weblog Looping Threads or Academia.edu profile.

Activities

Dr Aristea Fotopoulou is organising (with Prof Sally Munt) the SCCS workshop 'Queer, feminist and social media praxis' (17 May 2013). The workshop is linked to the 2nd Annual IFjP Conference (May 17-19, 2013 University of Sussex, Brighton, UK) '(Im)possibly Queer International Feminisms'.

INVITATIONS

• Invited reviewer for the Gender, Media, Film and Cultural Studies section of the Times Higher Education (THE) Textbook guide (issue November 2012).
• Commission to create the cover image for 'Rethinking Sex', a special issue of GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 17: 1, January 2011, edited by Ann Cvetkovich, Annamarie Jagose, Heather K. Love.

PEER REVIEW

• Feminist Review Journal.
• 8th Conference of the International Association for the Study of Sexuality, Culture and Society (IASSCS), Naming and framing: The making of Sexual (In)Equality (2011, Madrid)

Community and Business

Involved in the organising of the community/academia focused events:

• 2012 Sussex VDAY: Global movement and series of consciousness-raising events to end violence against girls and women.

Member of:

• Digital Culture & Communication ECREA section (elected member, YECREA representative)
• Brighton and Sussex Sexualities Network (BSSN),
• MeCCSA
• Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR)
• Feminist Women's studies association (FWSA).

Upcoming conference papers:

• Technoscientific publics (Title tbc) at the Publics then, now and beyond workshop, The Open University Tuesday 4 – Wednesday 5 June 2013.

• Digital Citizenship, Narrative Exchange and the Changing Terms of Civic Culture (Storycircle Project) at Citizen Media: New Mediations of Civic Engagement, 13-14 |June, University of Manchester
• Telling the story of the stories: imaginaries and materializations of digital engagement, at ICA 2013 London (International Communication Association), 20 June 2013, Panel The Materiality of Voice: International Perspectives on Digital Storytelling Practice.
• Feminist spaces and digital methodologies: Mapping the issue of reproductive technologies as a social controversy, at the FWSA 2013 conference ‘The Lady Doth Protest: Mapping Feminist Movements, Moments and Mobilisations’, 21 – 23 June 2013 (Feminist and Women’s Studies Association, UK & Ireland).
• Imaginaries of Smart Grids: Public Issues, Contradiction and Controversy at 4S Annual Meeting (Society of Social Studies of Science), 9-12 October 2013, San Diego, Panel: Imagining Public Issues in the Technosciences.
• Panel Expertise with/in Digital Media, World Social Science Forum 2013: Social Transformations and the Digital Age, October 13-15, 2013 in Montréal, Canada.

Selection of past conference papers:

• Sustaining networked knowledge: expertise, feminist media production, art and activismat CCIG Forum 30: Enacting public engagement: collaboration and critique within/beyond the university, 23 April 2013, The Open University.

• Network media and queer communities: local and cosmopolitan at the 4th European Communication Conference, ECREA Istabul 2012.

• Feminist identities and network narratives, at the 9th International Conference Crossroads in Cultural Studies, Paris, France, from July 2^nd to 6^th, 2012, hosted by Sorbonne Nouvelle University with the support of the French National Commission for UNESCO.

• Articulation alternatives: agents, spaces, communication, Goldsmiths Centre for the study of Global Media and Democracy, May 2012.

• Materialising practices: The embodiment of politics in digital networks at the MeCCSA 2012 Conference, University of Bedfordshire. January 2012.

• Web crawling, network narratives and performing political identities at the ‘Internet Research 12.0 – Performance and Participation’, Association of Internet Researchers (Aoir), Seattle 2011. Panel: Political subjects and political fields: Or how technology happens twice, with Caroline Bassett and Kate O’Riordan.

• The truth in Computing?: Issue Crawler and Cultural Research – A Workshop by Digital Humanities, Digital Methods, Research Centre for Digital Material Culture (2011 University of Sussex).

• Feminist networks, issues and identities: The case of Feminism in London 2009 at the 3rd European Communication Conference, ECREA (2010 University of Hamburg).

Associate Tutor - School of Media, Film and Music, University of Sussex

• Introduction to Media Studies 1 & 2, Academic Year 2009/2010
• Research Methods in Media and Film, Academic Year 2009/2010
• Questioning the Media, Academic Year 2010/2011
• Analysing Digital Media, Academic Year 2010/2011
• News, Politics and Power, Academic Year 2011/2012
• Postgraduate tutorials, International student support, Academic Year 2011/2012

Visiting Lecturer, University of Brighton

• Analysing Discourse (Critical Discourse Analysis prt of the module), Department of English and Media. Seminar Instructor, November 2010 - February 2011.
• Broadcast Media - a critical introduction, University of Brighton in Hastings, Lecture on "Genre", March, 3 2011. Seminar instructor February 2012 - June 2012.
• Critical Introduction to Media Studies, Lecturer & seminar instructor. October 2011- December 2011.

Module leader, University of Brighton

• Global political communication, February 2012 - June 2012 (BA Broadcast Journalism, University of Brighton).

Student Consultation

Fotopoulou, Aristea (2013) Remediating queer politics in online porn: brand(ed) new sexualities and real bodies. Journal of Lesbian Studies, 17 (3 & 4). (In Press)

Fotopoulou, Aristea (2012) Intersectionality Queer Studies and Hybridity: Methodological Frameworks for Social Research. Journal of International Women's Studies, 13 (2). pp. 19-32. ISSN 1539-8706

Fotopoulou, Aristea (2012) Intersectionality, queer studies and hybridity: Methodological frameworks for social research. Journal of International Women's Studies, 13 (2). pp. 19-32. ISSN 1539-8706

Fotopoulou, Aristea (2009) Translocal Connectivity and Political Identity: Brighton Queer Cultural Activism. In: Communicative approaches to politics and ethics in Europe. The intellectual work of the 2009 ECREA European Media and Communication Doctoral Summer School'. Unset. ISBN 978-9949-19-250-2