Printed from http://www.homepages.ed.ac.uk/jkstew

James Stewart

Senior Research Fellow,

Technology Studies Unit, (ISSTI) School of Social and Political Studies

and

School of Art, Culture and Enviornment (ACE)

Edinburgh University

Research Interests and Work

My interests lie in understanding the development of new technologies and the way that they are shaped, appropriated and become part of social relations and social institutions. This includes processes of adoption and diffusion, non-adoption and resistance, the way products and serices are invented and brought to market, the visions that drive firms and governments, and how these are turned into strategies and technology.

Currently I am working on project on the adoption of Web2.0 in scientific research and another on the development of standards for mobile technologies, particularly regarding China. Much of my work focuses on the future of wireless and mobile devices, and processes and implications of ubiquitous ICTs. Recently I have worked on future concepts of branding, location based technologies, place, space and non-place.

I also have an interest in the social implications of divisions in access and use of ICT on national and international level - the so called digital divide.

In 2002 I completed my PhD thesis "Encounters with the Information Society" on the co-shaping or co-evolution of multimedia technolgies and social institutions . This involves micro-sociological studies of the development of use and discourse around new technology. I look at how people encounter traditional and new media technology in everyday like, at home at work and in public life, and in the role of close social networks in forming experience and expectation. This has implications for understanding exclusion and inclusion in the 'information society', the real development of awareness and use of networked media, and the importance of informal networks for innovation and selling of new media products. This is available on-line here.

Teaching

I convene a Masters course called Social Shaping of Information and Communiations Technologies (SSICT) and lecture on similar issues around the information society, domestication of ICTs, and the design and use of technology.

I convene and teach an Honours and Masters course, Internet and Society for Sociology and other subject areas.

More details on my department home page

Other Stuff

I am a Member of the Institute of Electrical Engineers (IEE), and the European Association for Social Studies of Technology (EASST)

Where am I?

My position last time I logged in with Mobile Gmap Track


Published by James Stewart, 12 / 4 / 1996