Wednesday 9th January 4pm
De Montfort University, Leicester Media and Film Seminar Series 2008
Room Clephan 3.02

Dr Graeme Kirkpatrick, University of Manchester – ‘Dr Kawashima and the global culture industry: Gaming and social theory’

Graeme Kirkpatrick is interested in philosophy and sociology of technology, with a particular emphasis on the social and historical contingencies that shape technology design. He is currently working on a study of the computer game as a cultural form. His book (2004) Critical Technology: A social theory of personal computing (Ashgate) won the 2005 Philip Abrams Memorial Prize from the British Sociological Association.

He is currently writing a new book on computer game studies for Polity Press.

Other on-going research projects include a study of the social context of home computing in Europe in the 1980s, and an ethnographic study of how digital visualisations function in the workplace.