Biography

 

Kate is a Reader in the Department of Media and Film at Sussex. She has taught across the media studies curriculum specialising in digital media technologies, and science. In 2004 she chaired the International Conference of the Association of Internet Researchers, and she served on the executive committee of the organisation, 2004-2006. Kate has also served as vice-Chair of the Digital Culture and Communication section of the European Communication and Research Association.

Kate is on the coordinating committee of the Centre for Material Digital Culture, at the University of Sussex, and the Brighton and Sussex Sexualities Network (BSSN).

In 2006 she completed a three-year secondment to Lancaster University where she worked on media representations of human genomics at the Centre for the Social and Economic Aspects of Genomics (CESAGen), and where she continues to be an affiliated researcher.

She has made numerous interventions through publishing, conferences and public engagement activities in the UK and internationally.

A recent selection of these activities included acting as invited speaker or chair:

• Reproductive Dystopias at the Cambridge Department of History and Philosophy of Science, UK
• Drawing up a manifesto on ethics of e-research at The ethical issues of e-research panel, ESRC Research Methods Festival 2010, St Catherine's College, Oxford, UK
• Virtually McLuhan: Theorizing Code and Digital Life series at the Centre for Cross Faculty Enquiry in Education, UBC, Canada
• Biodigital lives: making, consuming, archiving the lives of technoscience, at the University of Sussex's Centre for Material Digital Culture
• Centre for Cultural Studies Colloquium, UCSC, USA
• TAP seminar series at Goteborg University, Sweden
• Science and Justice Working Groupat UC Santa Cruz, USA
• Digital Media: European Perspectives
• Media Technology and Sexuality at the University of Sussex's Centre for Material Digital Culture
  

Role

• Reader in Digital Media, University of Sussex.
• Affiliated CESAGen Researcher, Lancaster University.
• Co-ordinating Committee: Centre for Material Digital Culture.

 

Research

Kate's research is a cultural studies of science and technology that deploys sexuality and gender as key analytical categories.
Kate has worked on gender and gaming, web cameras, medical imaging, art and digital design. She has also published on sexuality and technology and the ethics of internet research. In the ICT strand of her research she edited collection with David Phillips called Queer Online: Media Technology and Sexuality. and co-edited a special edition of Communications: The European Journal of Communication Research with Maren Hartmann and Caroline Bassett.
In the biotechnology strand she completed a co-authored monograph on visual cultures of genomics, and discourses of human cloning in 2007 with Routledge: Human Cloning in the Media: From Science Fiction to Science Practice. and a single authored book project The Genome Incorporated: the construction of biodigital identity. (Ashgate, 2010)
More details of her work can be found at Academia.Edu Current projects: Queering Genealogies A project, together with Ross Robinson, which assembles audio files from interviews into a web-based installation. These materials are drawn from life stories about people who come from queer families, or who have experienced queer forms of kinship, and are themselves queer identified in some way. Accounting for Knowledge of Genetics and Cloning in Mass Observation (with Dr Joan Haran) EPINET—Integrated Assessment of Societal Impacts of Emerging Science and Technology from within Epistemic Networks (FP7-SCIENCE-IN-SOCIETY-2011-12 Collaborative project) Biodigital Lives: Bodies of Digital Culture  After the genome incorporated - Bodies of Digital Culture - a project bringing together the different sites that open up lived bodies to bio and information technologies, and which animate biodigital technologies by re-locating the body at their centre.

Teaching

Kate Convenes the MA in Digital Media 

She currently supervises DPhil work on feminism and new media, femininity and blogging, the future of the book, digital life histories, documentaries of the virtual and she has previously worked with students on hypertext and embodiment, gendered digital reading practices and online fan cultures. 

Taught postgraduate:

• Theory and Practice of Interactive Media

Undergraduate:

• Questioning the Media
• Science and the Media

Student Consultation

 

Student Consultation times for spring 2012:

Wednesdays 10-11am in SB330 

Thursdays 1-2pm in SB330

 

Selected publications

2011

Human Genomics: From Hypothetical Markers to Biodigital Materialisations London: Open Humanities Press ISBN 978-1-60785-264-3

Revisiting digital technologies: envisioning biodigital bodies in Communications: European Journal of Communication Research Volume 36 pp. 291¿312

Writing Biodigital Life: Personal Genomes and Digital media in Biography

2010

The Genome Incorporated: Constructing Biodigital Identity London: Ashgate, 164 pp. ISBN 9780754678519

Virtual Believers: Queer Spiritual Practice Online (with A. Yip, K. Browne, Munt, Sally, Prof, White, H.) Kath Browne, Sally R Munt, Andrew Yip, ed., in Queer Spiritual Spaces London: Ashgate ISBN 9780754675273

2009

From reproduction to research: sourcing eggs, IVF and cloning (with Haran, J.) in Feminist Theory Volume 10 pp. 191-210

Science Communication Reconsidered (with Borchelt, R., Brunger, F., Bubela, T., Caulfield, T., Critchley, C., Einsiedel, E., Geller, G., Gupta, A., Hampel, J., Hyde-Lay, R., Jandciu, E.W., Jones, S.A., Kolopack, P., Lane, S., Lougheed, T., Nerlich, B., Nisbet, M., Ogbogu, U., Quellette, C., Spear, M., Strauss, S., Thavaratnam, T., Willemse, L.) in Nature Biotechnology Volume 27 pp. 514-518

2008

Fragments of Creative Cloning: Time, Money and Relationships Andy Miah, ed., in Human Futures: Art in an Age of Uncertainty Liverpool: FACT & Liverpool University ISBN 9781846311819

Genomic science in contemporary film: institutions, individuals and genre (with A. Mackenzie, B. Bennett, M. Furstenau) Bruce Bennett, Marc Furstenau, Adrian Mackenzie, ed., in Cinema and Technology: Cultures, Theories, Practices Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan ISBN 9780230524774

Human Cloning in Film: Horror, Ambivalence, Hope. in Science as Culture Volume 17 pp. 145-162

2007

Human Cloning in the Media: From Science Fiction to Science Practice (with Haran, J., Kitzinger, J., McNeil, M.) London and New York: Routledge, 244 pp. ISBN 978-0-415-42236-9

Queer Online: Media Technology and Sexuality (edited with D.J. Phillips) New York: Peter Lang ISBN 978-0-820-48631-4

Queer Theories and Cybersubjects: Intersecting Figures O'Riordan, K and Philips, D, ed., in Queer Online: Media Technology and Sexuality New York: Peter Lang pp. 13-30 ISBN 978-0-820-48631-4

Technologized Bodies: Virtual Women and Transformations in Understandings of the Body as Natural (with J. Hargreaves, P. Vertinsky) Hargreaves J, and Vertinsky P, ed., in Physical Culture, Power and the Body London: New York: Routledge pp. 232-252 ISBN 978-0-415-36352-5

2006

Gender Technology and Visual Cyberculture A Massanari and D Silver, ed., in Critical Cyberculture Studies New York: New York University Press pp. 243-254 ISBN 9780814740248

Women, Feminism and Human Cloning: Recirculating Concerns and Critiques (with Haran, J.) in Feminist Media Studies Volume 6 pp. 217-222

2005

Changing Cyberspaces: Dystopia and Technological Excess Stacy Gillis, ed., in The Matrix Trilogy: Cyberpunk Reloaded London: Wallflower Press pp. 138-150 ISBN 978-1904764328

From usenet to Gaydar: a comment on queer online community in ACM SIGGROUP Bulletin http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1067721.1067727: Volume 25 pp. 28-32

Internet Research Annual: Volume Three (edited with M. Consalvo, O'Riordan, Kate, Dr) New York: Peter Lang ISBN 978-0-8204-7856-2

Internet Research: Questioning Ubiquity (with Consalvo, M., M. Consalvo, O'Riordan, Kate, Dr) O'Riordan, K and Consalvo, M, ed., in Internet Research Annual: Volume Three New York: Peter Lang pp. 1-8 ISBN 978-0-8204-7856-2

Transgender Activism and the Net: Global Activism or Casualty of Globalisation Wilma de Jong, Martin Shaw and Neil Stammers, ed., in Global Media, Global Activism London: Pluto Press ISBN 9780745321950

2004

Virtual Ideals: Art, Science and Gendered Cyberbodies (with C. Reiche, Doyle, J., V. Kuni) Kuni, V and Reiche, C, ed., in Cyberfeminism: Next Protocols Brooklyn, NY: Autonomedia Books ISBN 9781570271496

2002

Ethics of Internet Research: Contesting the Human Subjects Model. (with Bassett, E.H.) in Journal of Ethics and Information Technology. Volume 4 pp. 233-247

Virtually Belonging: Risk, Connectivity and Coming Out On-line (with Bassett, E.H., Munt, Sally, Prof) in International Journal of Sexuality and Gender Studies Volume 7 pp. 125- 137

Virtually Visible: Female Cyberbodies and the Medical Imagination (with A. Booth, Doyle, J., M. Flanagan) Booth, A and Flanagan, M, ed., in Reload: Rethinking Women and Cyberculture Cambridge: MIT Press ISBN 978-0-262-56150-1

Windows on the Web: The Female Body and the Web Camera Consalvo, M and Paasonen, S, ed., in Women and Everyday Uses of the Internet: Agency & Identity New York: Peter Lang ISBN 978-0-8204-6141-0

2001

Playing With Lara in Virtual Space (with Munt, Sally, Prof) S R Munt, ed., in Technospaces - Inside the New Media London: Cassell pp. 224-238 ISBN 9780826450043