Prof Ben Light

School of Health & Society

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Known as

Ben Light

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Current positions

Professor

Biography

My research concerns people’s everyday experiences of digital media with a focus on (non)consumption, gender and sexuality, digital methods, and digital media engagement for arts, culture, health and wellbeing. I am author (with Susanna Paasonen and Kylie Jarrett) of NSFW: Sex and Humor in Social Meida (2019 MIT Press) and Disconnecting with Social Networking Sites (Palgrave 2014). I have published widely in journals such as New Media and Society, First Monday, Information Communication and Society, Cultural Sociology, Information Technology and People, Convergence and Continuum. I am an Associate Editor for New Media and Society and Social Media and Society.

Organisations I have worked with include: Health Education England, the Northern Care Alliance, the LGBT Foundation, the Albert Kennedy Trust (AKT), the State Library of Queensland, the London Symphony Orchestra, the Imperial War Museums, Brook Advisory, the NHS Cancer Screening Programme, and Cooperatives UK.

As well as working at the University of Salford (1999-2014; 2016 to present), I have held positions at the University of Manchester and Queensland University of Technology. I have also worked outside Higher Education, for the NHS, the NHS Executive and Yorkshire MESMAC.

Areas of Research

Online Dating and Hooking Up, Gender, Sexuality, Digital Methods, Internet Studies, Social Media.

Areas of Supervision

Social Media
Digital Society
Digital Media
Digital Methods
Gender
Sexuality
Hookup Apps
Online Dating
Internet Studies

Teaching Qualifications and Recognitions Publications

Teaching

My teaching relates to the broad area of digital society but within this I have interests in:

•popular internet culture
•the intersection of gender, sexuality and digital cultures
•digital inclusion/exclusion
•how we experience the digital in our personal and work lives
•the politics of apps, platforms, big data and data visualisation
•our lived experience of algorithms, bots and AI
•the development and use of digital methods – engaging with digital technologies to investigate our lives.

I currently contribute to the undergraduate modules: Research Problems and Methods: Qualitatively Better, and Gender, Crime and Criminal Justice.

Qualifications and Recognitions

Qualifications

  • Technological Appropriation

    2003

  • Information Management

    1997

  • Consumer Studies (1st Class Honours)

    1996

Recognitions

  • Association of Internet Researchers Nancy Baym Book Award - 2020 for NSFW: Sex, Humor and Risk in Social Media, MIT Press.

  • AoIR 2017, Doctoral Colloqiuum Chair, Tartu, Estonia.

  • Best paper award European Conference on Information Systems: Claudio Ciborra Award for most Provocative Paper, Helsinki, Finland.

  • Visiting Professor, ITU, Copenhagen, Denmark.

  • Associate Editor New Media and Society

Publications

Publications

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