Living with Technology: The Friction, Disconnection and Joy of Digital Life

Having recently completed my doctoral research into a community of digital detoxers in California, this fellowship will give me the opportunity to maximise the impact of this original and exciting research and reach the widest possible academic and general audience.

For my doctoral research I undertook an ethnography of a digital detoxing community, where I found that digital detoxers do indeed live with technology in day-to-day life, but shift their attitudes and aspirations towards digital devices. At the transformative New Age retreat, they feel a sense of "tribal" community belonging, and are inspired by this to prioritise their happiness and "intentional" way of life back home.

This is a groundbreaking piece of research which challenges much of the existing stalemate between "good" and "bad" visions of digital technology. By publishing two new published papers, I will disseminate key findings that speak to these ongoing academic conversations about digital harm and non-use. In addition, I am excited to publish my ethnography in book form and written for a general audience, telling the story of my time with this community while providing a new perspective on how we can think about the role of digital technology in society today. This fellowship will allow this research to reach its full potential, impacting both academic and non-academic debates.

During the fellowship I will be bringing together digital creatives and researchers in a Digital Joy Network which will celebrate creatives and researchers who celebrate joyful, touching, and connecting digital experiences. This Digital Joy Network will practically consist of a series of interviews or "fireside chats" hosted within immersive online environments. By drawing on my own interviewing skills developed through my ethnography, and on my organising skills developed during my time at the Oxford Internet Institute, I will learn how these exciting digital creatives and researchers are conceptualising our current moment in time, and what important new trends are arising. In addition, this network will generate a community around this topic, fostering a space for new ideas, connections, and opportunities. Running this network alongside my new publications will serve to firmly establish myself as a key voice in this exciting area.

I am both a digital anthropologist and artist working within the topic of digital life; as such I offer a uniquely interdisciplinary approach to this important topic. As an artist, I made sculptures and screen prints which explored the role of technology in our lives; and it was these experiments which generated my doctoral research. With this fellowship, I will return to art as an integral part of my thought process. I will first use ceramic sculpture to explore the physical experience of life with digital devices. By recreating and reimagining discarded pieces of technology, these experiments will play with nostalgia and texture. Exhibiting these pieces both online and in an exhibition will allow for a rich exchange of ideas with audiences outside of my academic network, sparking new ideas, opportunities, and avenues of research.

I have been fortunate to benefit from excellent training courses across the University of Oxford during my doctoral studies, and during this fellowship I will make use of the Social Sciences Division's "Knowledge Exchange and Impact" training. This will help me ensure that I maximize the impact of my original research findings across my papers, book, and artworks, and will give me valuable skills to take forwards into my career. I will undertake further training in TORCH's Researcher Development and Training Programme, particularly their "Public Engagement with Research" pathway, where I am excited to build skills in public dissemination via podcasting, storytelling, and writing for journalistic outlets.