Dr Alison Harvey

Lecturer in Media and Communication
office: 3.05 Bankfield House

e-mail: ah463@le.ac.uk

telephone: 0116 294 4851

website: alisonharvey.ca

Research

Both my teaching and research are informed by an overarching focus on inclusivity, diversity, democratization, and equity in digital culture. While a great deal of my work considers in particular video games culture and the Internet, what underpins this scholarship is a critical approach to new media informed by feminist analysis, cultural studies, critical technology theory, and media studies. This touches on a range of issues and forms of marginalization in relation to digital culture, and includes the following ongoing project:

Women in Games, Media, and Technology Initiatives and Community Groups

This ongoing work includes interviews, participant-observation, ethnography, and participatory action research on initiatives and organizations intended to get more women in various creative, media. and tech. These are sometimes devised by existing organizations with established missions and sometimes in a grassroots manner by community groups. In this study, we consider a range of theoretical and practical issues related to community organizing for inclusivity and social justice purposes, including questions of immaterial and affective labour, feminisms and anti-feminism, civility and call-out culture, the limits of defining a community, creative leadership, and broader discourses of inclusivity and diversity in game spaces, both online and offline.

Link to Publications

Teaching and Supervision

In 2015-2016, I will be leading the following modules:

▪ MS3011 Digital Games and Culture

▪ MS7218 Critical Game Studies

In the past I have also contributed to:

Undergraduate

▪ MS1002 Topics in Media and Communication

▪ MS1003 Media and Globalization

▪ MS2002 Analysing Communication Processes

▪ MS2004 Creative Audiences

▪ MS2009 New Media and Everyday Life

▪ MS3000 Media and Gender

Postgraduate

▪ MS7001 Research Methods and Management I

▪ MS7005 Research Methods and Management II

▪ MS7021 Research Project Design and Execution

▪ MS7042 Research Methods for the Online World

▪ MS7303 New Media Cultures

▪ MS7307 Advertising as Socio-Cultural Form

▪ MS7214 Gender Politics and Contemporary Media

▪ MS7330 Approaches to Media, Culture & Communication

I currently supervise PhD students researching gender performance and selfie production, community norms in virtual worlds, game design for sex education, and the tattooed body.

I am also keen to supervise prospective undergraduate and postgraduate students who want to conduct research in the following areas:
▪ Game studies
▪ Internet studies and digital culture
▪ Youth culture and digital media
▪ Feminist and queer theory as well as gender studies

Professional activities

I am the Web Design Chair for the Department of Media and Communication. Additionally, I am a member of the International Association for Media and Communication Research, the International Communication Association, Culture Digitally, the Association of Internet Researchers, the Association for Research in Cultures of Young People, the Canadian Game Studies Association, and the Canadian Communication Association. I have reviewed papers for Information, Communication, and Society, the International Journal of Gender, Science, and Technology, Loading…Journal of the Canadian Game Studies Association, Eludamos: Journal for Computer Game Studies, as well as submissions to the International Communication Association, the Digital Games Research Association Conference, the Foundations of Digital Games Annual Conference, and the Association of Internet Researchers Annual Conference.