Diversity in Cultural Leadership: a report for the West Midlands Leadership Commission

Since late 2017 I have been working with my colleague Dr Annette Naudin and Professor Jenny Phillimore of University of Birmingham on a report which maps diversity in cultural leadership in the West Midlands. This is part of a larger project on diversity in leadership by the West Midlands Leadership Commission, led by Mayor of

‘Fads’ and expertise

I’m coming to the end of a first full draft of my PhD, and in the introduction I attempted to situate my work within the wider context, my work being about expertise, and the wider context being debates around ‘post-truth’ and the denigration of experts. I mention it briefly in my introduction but if I

Registration open: the politics of expertise in media and cultural research

Free registration is now open for the symposium The politics of expertise in media and cultural research taking place at Birmingham City University on November 30 2016. Register here. Due to the unprecedented number and quality of submissions the symposium will now begin at 1pm and end at 6pm. All interested in expertise are welcome!

Is anonymous social media the answer to cyberbullying? No

Yesterday I came across this article in Mashable about the anonymous social network whisper, and whether it is the answer to cyberbullying. I can answer that immediately – no. It is not the answer. I’m going to attempt to explain why using some new found knowledge gleaned from my reading of Aaron Balick’s The Psychodynamics

Is the development of what has come to be called Web 2.0 and similar technologies changing us in some fundamental way, or are they simply novel technological platforms through which the same old psychological traits express themselves through a different medium? Balick, A (2013) The Psychodynamics of Social Networking: Connected-up Instantaneous Culture and the Self

Alone Together

I’ve just finished reading Sherry Turkle’s book: Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less From Each Other. I highly recommend it.  My immediate thoughts as I finished the book were ‘this is fascinating and depressing’. In the book, she discusses how technology has left us more connected than ever before, but also more alone

Social media and identity

I’ll admit, I have several social media profiles and I use all of them in very different ways. I have different friends/followers, talk about different subjects, share different things. I have several online personas.  Aaron Balick has summed it up perfectly in his latest blog post:  “Identities are complex beasts. The are at the same

Know Your Place

Today I went to Know Your Place, an event organised by the lovely people at Fused Magazine and BSeen.  The event consisted of talks by various influential people in business and the creative industries, including Andy Hartwell from Substrakt, designer maker Eryka Isaak and Julia Higginbottom of Aquila TV, all centred about freelance and enterprise.

JEECamp 2010

Today was the third and final JEECamp, held at The Bond in Digbeth (click on the link for full coverage). My job during the day was to live blog various discussions taking place.  First off was a keynote speech by Simon Waldman, Director of Digital Publishing at the Guardian Media Group.  He talked about the importance

Kanya King, CEO and founder of the MOBO Organisation

Last night I went to a seminar at Birmingham University by Kanya King, CEO and founder of the MOBO Organisation.   Kanya described to us her arduous journey from a council flat in London to hosting one of the biggest, most star-studded and most relevant music award ceremonies in Europe.  She told us about how