about

media140 Perth, Australia

I’m an Australian (and sometimes Canadian) based researcher, maker and educator focused on games, privacy, social media and the internet. I co-founded Atmosphere Industries, an award-winning pervasive and cross-media game non-profit based in Toronto and an Associate at London’s Six to Start. I specialise in ethnographic approaches, which I bring together with my game design background to create inclusive and insightful action research projects. My most recent project was Gaming Privacy, which used action research methods to create and study a privacy literacy game for children with a group of 8-10 year olds as co-designers.

Before Gaming Privacy, Atmosphere Industries also received a lot of attention for our 2010 effort, Gentrification: The Game, a celebration of public space which encouraged players to mischievously hack their environments. Gentrification was invited to festivals around the world, including Toronto, London and Berlin and won Best use of Tech and Best of Fest 2010 at Come Out and Play in New York and was a Winning Selection at TIFF Kids 2010 in Toronto.

I have appeared on MTV, CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation), NPR and ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) and in the Globe and Mail, Spacing Magazine, and La Presse and have presented my work at a wide range of international academic, government and industry conferences including SXSWi, NXNEi, Netsquared, the International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners and the Association of Internet Researchers’ Annual Conference.

Research and Education
I’m currently a researcher and teacher the Department of Internet Studies at Curtin University (Australia), and faculty at the OCADU/CFC Media Lab Digital Futures program (Canada), where I run the social and networked media unit. As well as teaching, I’m in the final stages of my PhD, also at Curtin University. My thesis is an ethnographic study (that was carried out in both physical and virtual space) of a community of 20-something Facebook users combined with a secondary ethnography with the company behind Facebook. Drawing on science studies and STS, my thesis also connects the historically rooted philosophies and ideologies of the Bay Area in California (such as radical transparency, techno optimism and cybernetics) with the architecture of privacy in social media. Taken together, my thesis provides a critical background for the philosophy behind and implications of Facebook’s privacy architecture. Previously, I was a Research Associate at Ryerson University’s Experiential Design and Gaming Environment’s Lab (Canada) where, I researched privacy and autonomy in censorware and MMOs for kids.

I have an honours degree from the University of Toronto in Semiotics & Communication Theory and Philosophy (double major), and I’m a graduate of the CFC Media Lab‘s Interactive Art and Entertainment Programme (formally Habitat).

Previous Projects & Interests
I founded of PrivacyCampTO, Canada’s first privacy unconference series funded by the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, Ryerson’s EDGE Lab and the Mozilla Foundation. The event is an open forum to discuss privacy issues that anyone can attend and contribute to. The event is part of a larger, loose collective of international PrivacyCamps.

Previously, I worked with a number of high tech community organisations and NGOs doing social media engagement and research, including the youth-focused TakingITGlobal.

I’m also passionate about holistic and Eastern medicine, organic and community supported agriculture (I’m a member of the amazing Cutting Veg CSA), gender equity, geek feminism, LGBTQ rights, public space, free speech, public broadcasting and compassionate and ethical treatment of animals (I volunteer for Annex Cat Rescue and I’m a big fan of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine).