Jennifer Gabrys

Science and technology studies, digital media, materiality, environments and environmental change, urbanism, creative practice, participation, inventive methods

Jennifer is currently Principal Investigator on the European Research Council starting grant, 'Citizen Sensing and Environmental Practice: Assessing Participatory Engagements with Environments through Sensor Technologies.' Prior to joining the Department of Sociology, she was Senior Lecturer and Convenor of the MA in Design and Environment in the Department of Design at Goldsmiths, University of London. She completed a PhD in Communication Studies at McGill University in Montreal, during which time she was engaged as a research fellow on the Culture of Cities and Digital Cities / Mobile Digital Commons projects.

Areas of supervision

Jennifer's research student supervision is located in the following broadly defined areas: environments and creative practice; digital media and social media; citizen sensing; waste and materialities; urban political ecologies and cultural geography; environmental change and climate change; transdisciplinarity and emerging modes of practice.

Presentations and exhibitions

30 January 2013 - Depletion Design, invited panel discussant, Transmediale, Berlin, Germany

5-7 December 2012 - Digital Materiality in the Smart City, invited speaker for ‘Media Places: Infrastructure, Space, Media,’ HUMlab, Umeå University, Sweden

25-28 October 2012 - Sensing and Remediating a Garbage Patch, invited seminar contributor and discussant for ‘Genesis and Ontology of Technoscientific Objects,’ co-organized by University of Paris Pantheon-Sorbonne and TU Darmstadt; hosted in Pont-à-Mousson, France

22 October 2012 - Sensing an Experimental Forest, invited speaker for Computational Culture launch event, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK

25 August 2012 - Ecological Observatories, Fluctuating Sites and Sensing Subjects, invited speaker for ‘Sense of Planet: The Arts and Ecology at Earth Magnitude,’ National Institute for Experimental Arts, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

23 August 2012 - Programming Environments: Politics and Practices of Urban Sensing, invited speaker for the Digital Media Research Seminar, co-hosted by the School of Humanities and Communication Arts and the Institute for Culture and Society, University of Western Sydney, Australia

25-27 June 2012 - Citizen Science and the Politics of Sensing, invited speaker for ‘The Citizen Scientist on the Move: Digital Play, Politics and Epistemology,’ University of Utrecht and Waag Society Amsterdam, Netherlands

24-25 May 2012 - Materiality as Process: The Case of Electronic Waste, invited speaker for the Ecology, Environment, Culture Network (EECN), an international interdisciplinary research network on media, technology and environment, Trondheim University, Norway

12 May 2012 - The Art of Gathering Environmental Data, invited plenary speaker for Pixelache, Helsinki, Finland

10 May 2012 - Remaking Electronic Waste: Materiality, Process and Creative Intervention, invited speaker for Trashlab, Aalto University, Helsinki, Finland

18-19 January 2012 - Materializing the Dirt of Electronic Energy, invited presentation for ‘The Invisible Seminar,’ Bergen National Academy of the Arts, Norway

25 October 2011 - Bluebottle Flies, Biodegradability and Urban Matter, invited speaker for ‘Insect City,’ hosted by Urban Laboratory, University College London, held at Fritz Haeg’s ‘Animal Estates’ exhibition, Arup phase 2, London, UK

21 June 2011 - Material Politics: Plastic, Carbon, and the Work of the Biodegradable, presentation for ‘Accumulation: The Material Ecologies and Economies of Plastic’ seminar presentation, co-organized by Jennifer Gabrys, Mike Michael (Goldsmiths / CSISP), and Gay Hawkins (University of Queensland); hosted at Goldsmiths, University of London, UK

16 March 2011 - Life in the City, invited speaker for Department of Architecture seminar series, University of Sheffield, UK

28 January 2011 - Moss-Eye View: Life under the Radar,’ invited speaker for ‘Life Itself,’ Visual Cultures conference and MA workshop, Department of Visual Cultures, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK

10 March 2010 - Dirt, invited speaker for ‘Object Fair,’ Design and Social Science Seminar, Goldsmiths, University of London, UK

7 April 2009 - Arts, Sciences and Researching Environmental Change, invited speaker with Kathryn Yusoff / Weather Permitting for AHRC Living with Environmental Change seminar, London, UK

Grants & awards

Research interests

Jennifer’s research and practice investigates environments, material processes and digital technologies through theoretical and practice-based work. Projects within this area include Digital Rubbish: A Natural History of Electronics (University of Michigan Press, 2011), which examines the materialities of electronic waste; and a study currently underway on environmental sensor technologies and practices, Program Earth: Environment as Experiment in Sensing Technology.

She is a Co-Investigator on the ESRC / RCUK Energy Programme-funded project, Energy and Co-Designing Communities. This study, which is a collaboration with Mike Michael, Bill Gaver and the Interaction Research Studio, investigates how new technologies might be designed to engage communities in rethinking energy consumption.

Gabrys is a member of Surface Tension; and a member of Weather Permitting, a collaborative environmental design and research group focused on climate change.

Selected publications