Now

What’s on my plate and on my mind these days? Here’s a non-exhaustive list.

• Teaching
  • For the second time, I’m teaching Ethics in Contemporary Ethnographic Research in the first year of our bachelor’s program with a crack team of co-instructors.
  • I am finishing up co-teaching two methods classes in the urban studies program: Data Collection Methods, and Advanced Qualitative Methods. In our final session, students in the latter presented research proposals that they developed over the course of the semester.
  • Reading the final reports of my fieldwork students, who did research on issues relating to digital platforms for the past year. Our theme was “Winners and Losers in the Digital City,” and the individual projects looked at a Dutch labor union’s use of digital tools, the livelihoods of food delivery riders in Leiden, the digital practices of sex workers in the Netherlands, and a massive informal online study space called StudyStream.
  • The theme for my fieldwork section starting in the fall will almost certainly be “There is a Kind of Love Called Maintenance,” a line lifted from the poem “Atlas” by U.A. Fanthorpe. It’s a lovely poem.
  • In the fall, I will likely teach at the University of Bergen again as part of the team offering the course Qualitative Digital Methods for Social Scientists.
• Speaking
  • Looking forward to taking part in a workshop on Urban–Digital Spectacle on June 8–9 in London, organized by Carwyn Morris and Amy Zhang. First work-related international travel since You Know What!
  • Also taking part in this year’s Workshop on Computing within Limits on June 21–22 with two papers: one massively co-authored with nine colleagues, the other just mine.
• Writing
  • My co-author, Justus Uitermark, and I are awaiting final reviews on our completed manuscript called On Display: Instagram, the Self, and the City. It should go into production later this year, and once published it will be the first title in Oxford University Press’s Computational Social Science series.
  • Working on some papers with the Centre for BOLD Cities team I’m a part of.
  • In a few weeks, I’ll be presenting a half-baked idea for a more popular piece I’d like to write to the d12n Research Cluster. I hope they like it!

This is a now page.