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Staff Profile

Professor Deborah Chambers

Professor of Media and Cultural Studies

  • Address: Media, Culture, Heritage
    School of Arts and Cultures
    Newcastle University
    Armstrong Building
    Queen Victoria Road
    Newcastle upon Tyne
    NE1 7RU
Background


As Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at Newcastle University, my research lies within two areas that intersecting media & cultural studies and sociology. The first area of research comprises digital technologies and social relations, centred on the interconnections between media technologies, media cultures and everyday life. I focus on the changing cultural forms and uses of media technologies, from early television to today's digital and smart technologies with a particular interest in the transforming role of media and digital technologies in homes and households; social media, mobility & networked intimacies; families, children & media. The second area comprises research on cybersecurity issues relating to online harms.

In addition to numerous articles, I have written eight books which include: Cultural Ideals of Home: The Social Dynamics of Domestic Space (Routledge 2020); Changing Media, Homes and Households: Cultures, Technologies and Meanings (Routledge 2016); Social Media and Personal Relationships: Online Intimacies and Networked Friendship (Palgrave 2013); A Sociology of Family Life: Change and Diversity in Intimate Relations (Chambers and Gracia, Polity 2022); New Social Ties: Contemporary Connections in a Fragmented Society (Palgrave 2006), Women and Journalism (Chambers, Steiner and Fleming, Routledge 2004); Representing the Family (Sage 2001). 

Google Scholar link


Background

Before coming to Newcastle University, I researched and lectured in Media, Communication and Culture in both the UK and Australia including the Universities of Nottingham Trent, Staffordshire, and Glamorgan in the UK, and University of Western Sydney, Nepean in Australia where I collaboratively established BA (Hons) and MA degree programmes in Media and Communication Studies and set up the Women’s Research Centre. After gaining a PhD from Kent University in Sociology of Communication & Culture, I began my postdoctoral career as Research Assistant in Sociology at Liverpool University, researching the impact of shift work on employees’ leisure and non-work lives. I was then Research Associate in Recreation Management at Loughborough University focusing on changing patterns of leisure in the home. Both large-scale projects were funded by the joint ESRC/Sports Council Panel.

As well as the founding Subject Leader of Media, Communication and Cultural Studies here at Newcastle University (2005 - 2007), I led the subject's research, and postgraduate studies. This flourishing subject area is now combined with Museum and Heritage Studies to form a leading research and teaching team in Media, Culture and Heritage within Newcastle University’s School of Arts and Cultures.

I currently supervise several PhD students from all over the world, in the field of Media, Communication and Cultural Studies.

I present papers regularly at international conferences and symposia in several countries such as Germany, Sweden, Poland, France, Portugal, Austria, the Netherlands, Australia, the Czech Republic, and Belgium. As well as a member of ESRC Peer Review Colleges, I am a media commentator on topics relating to digital media and culture, including BBC Radio 4.

Roles

Member of the Steering Group for Cybersecurity and Online Harms (a Centre of Research Excellence at Newcastle University).

Research grants

I am co-investigator of AGENCY: Assuring Citizen Agency in a World with Complex Online Harms, funded by EPSRC, £3.4m (EP/W032481/1). The aim of this 3 year project is to gain a deep understanding of the role of citizen agency in reducing complex online harms, focusing on personal devices for health and wellbeing, digital identity management, smart homes and online disinformation. The project is led by Prof. Aad van Moorsel (Computer Science, University of Birmingham).

I have acted as co-investigator of Emerging Minds: Action for Child Mental Health. This 4 year ESRC Network is funded from 2019 - 2023 by UK Research and Innovation, ESRC (£1.5m, ES/S004726/1, led by Prof. Cathy Creswell, Oxford University).The Network brought together academics from health research, arts, design, humanities and physical sciences to establish the best ways of helping children, young people and families benefit from mental health research. Partners include Mental Health Museum, YoungMinds, 

Memberships

Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts

Member of ESRC & AHRC Peer Review Colleges (to 2018)

Member of International Communication Association (ICA)

Member of European Communication, Research and Education Association (ECREA)

Member of International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR)

Member of Media, Communication and cultural Studies Association (MeCCSA)

Research

Research

Intersecting sociology and media & cultural studies, my research specialism encompasses media technologies and cultures covering peoples' everyday engagement with emerging technologies; histories of media and digital media technologies and cultures; gender and smart futures; home cultures..


Currently, I am exploring the entrance of emerging technologies in homes and households. This focus includes smart home risks and household dynamics, virtual reality's potential impact on household dynamics, and how video call technologies such as Zoom reshape interpersonal communication and household relations. Overall, the exploration of 'media homes' and 'digital homes' comprises four dimensions: the spatial and temporal dimensions of digital technologies in the home; householders and digital media; the design and domestic adoption of analogue TV; and corporate and public discourses about future media technologies. 


I am co-investigator of AGENCY: Assuring Citizen Agency in a World with Complex Online Harms (2022-2025), funded by EPSRC, £3.4m (EP/W032481/1). This 3-year project aims to enhance citizen agency by reducing complex online harms. The project engages with the general UK population to identify demographic markers that intersect with complex harms online, The term 'complex harms' is motivated by the UK government's White Paper on Online Harms. To provide more proactive and structured approaches to protecting citizens online, the project is steered by the following case studies: (1) personal devices for health and wellbeing; (2) digital identity management; (3) smart homes; (4) online disinformation. AGENCY's objective is to establish interdisciplinary co-design principles, technology foundations and collaborative governance procedures to assure online citizen agency in the presence of multiple stakeholder interests. The project's principle investigator is Prof. Aad van Moorsel (Computer Science and Head of Secure & resilient Systems research Group at Newcastle University). The interdisciplinary team comprises colleagues in computer science at Newcastle and Durham Universities and in law and emerging technologies, enterprise and innovation, and business ethics.


I have been co-investigator of a UKRI Mental Health Network, 'Emerging Minds: Action for Child Mental Health' (2018-2022, £1.5 m (led by Prof. Cathy Creswell, Oxford University), which sought to find the best ways of helping children, young people and families benefit from mental health research. The network activities involved charities, policymakers, practitioners and healthcare technology, including social media. I led the North East dimension of the network. Partners include Mental Health Museum, YoungMinds, the Centre for Mental Health, MQ, the NSPCC, the Mental Elf. 


My book on Cultural Ideals of Home: The Social Dynamics of Domestic Space (Routledge 2020) spans the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries to investigate how 'home' is imagined, represented and experienced in western culture. The book explores how home is idealised as a middle-class haven, managed as an investment, and signified as a status symbol and expression of personal identities. A range of public, state, commercial, popular and expert discourses are examined about 'home' including the heritage industry, design, exhibitions, television, social media, home mobilities and migration, smart technologies and ecological sustainability. The book engages with debates in cultural history and cultural geography while also offering a distinctive media and and cultural studies approach supported by original, historically informed case studies on the following: interior and domestic design; exhibitions of model homes; TV home interiors; 'media home' imaginaries; multiscreen homes; corporate visions of future homes; and the social implications of digital smart homes.


The book on Changing Media, Homes and Households (Routledge 2016), was also written during a period of far-reaching social, cultural and technological changes. It explores the complex relationship between home, families, households and media technologies by charting key developments in the creation of the media home, from the early twentieth century to the present. The book identifies media technologies’ role in altering relationships between home and the outside world; work and leisure and how domestic media transform or reinforce identities and relations of gender, generation, social class and migrancy. The chapters provide original in-depth case studies of the processes involved in media’s adoption into the home: early television design, family-centred video gaming, the domestication of tablet computers, and the evolution from “smart homes” to today’s “connected” homes.


Social Media and Personal Relationships (Palgrave 2013) examines digital intimacies in the context of changing social networks online. New forms of self-representation and modes of interaction on social media are addressed. By critically engaging with social theories and debates about changing intimacies, The concept and evolving nature of online ‘friendship’ and sociability are explored to theorize the rise of social media friendships through digital media engagement within new, personalized networked cultures.  


A Sociology of Family Life: Change and Diversity in Intimate Relations (Polity Press 2022, second edition with Pablo Gracia) engages critically with contemporary debates about the changing concept of 'the family' by focusing on transformations in family and personal lives and the growing diversity of intimate relations. The chapters also deals with debates about the meaning and nature of ‘family’ beyond as well as within Western cultures through a series of transnational case studies. The first edition of the book was selected by Choice as outstanding academic title of 2013.


Teaching

Teaching

I contribute to degree programme developments

PhD supervision

I currently supervise PhD students on topics on digital media and technologies.

Postgraduate and Undergraduate Teaching

I provide supervision for MA and BA (Hons) dissertation students in Media, Culture and Communication, and Media and Journalism,

 

Publications