Dr Joanne Armitage

Profile

My research is concerned with understanding digital technology in culture and society. The broader questions that frame my work speak to the politics of digital technology—who produces it, how it is produced and how it shapes different practices. I employ participatory, digital and empirical methods to examine technologies in the context of environmental justice and (in)equality. With this, I work with expert and non-expert groups to develop (new) technologies and infrastructures to examine the ways in which they facilitate different practices and forms of political agency. I lead the AHRC networking grant Sus_NET: Sustainable Marking for Feminist Action which examines technological practices through the lens of sustainability and equality. I have lectured in Digital Media at the School of Media and Communication, University of Leeds since 2016.

I have contributed to a large number of public-facing projects such as Machine Learning Imaginations where participants explore machine learning as an embodied, lived and reconfigurable technology. Similarly, Automation and Me brought together a group of international artists and academics to explore and respond to automation as a critical issue in society through a feminist lens. In 2018 I participated in a coding cultural exchange between Yorkshire and Tokyo funded by Arts Council England, British Council, Daiwa Foundation and Sasakawa Foundation.

Alongside my work at Leeds, I am Research Associate in the Department of Sociology, University of Cambridge. Here I contribute to the AirKit proof of concept project as part of the Citizen Sense research group led by Prof Jennifer Gabrys.

Alongside my academic work, I am an algorithmic producer and musician and currently produce music for the Bloomberg series ‘Art + Technology’. My work has been featured in The Times, Guardian, BBC Radio 3, BBC Radio 5. I have received Sound and Music’s Composer-Curator fund (2018) and am a resident at Somerset House Studios. Recent commissions include environmental soundscape Collision Grounds with video artist Anya Stewart Maggs.

Research interests

• Enivronment and media
• Digital methods
• Gender and technology
• Sensory media
• Practice-research
• Physical computing and hacking
• Touch and haptics

Qualifications

• Music Multimedia and Electronics (BSc)
• PhD Practice-led Sound and Music Computing
• Fellow of the Higher Education Academy

Student education

I teach at undergraduate and postgraduate level.

• Digital Media and the Senses

• Digital Practice

• Postgraduate Dissertation

Research groups and institutes

• Digital Cultures