Dr Son Vivienne & Dr Lutfiye Ali each introduce their current research for the next in DERC’s Brown Bag Lunchtime Seminar Series.

In this presentation Son Vivienne presents an overview of ongoing research that examines the intersections between emergent gender categories and fluid, multiple digital identities. Non-binary gender identities pose a problem for international provision of education, health services and citizenship, and yet gender-diverse stories proliferate in a multitude of online spaces and are increasingly visible in mainstream media. Could the co-incidence of new ‘beyond-dualistic’ ways of being neither wholly male/female and online/offline, spell an end to finite and binary ways of being and doing gender?

Please join Lutfiye Ali for an informal presentation and conversations relating to identity, oppression and power arising from the intersections of our social identities. To facilitate this process, Lutfiye will draw on her personal narratives to contextualise and surface relations of power in her personal journey to academic and community-based research. More specifically, she will discuss the challenges of turning a gendered analytical lens onto her own identity and Muslim communities in an anti-Islamic context.

*Bring your brown bag lunch

Image: Son Vivienne (left), Lutfiye Ali (right)

Mediating distance – how media challenge friendship relations

We depend more than ever on digital media for maintaining our social contacts, while we observe an increasing mobilisation of society, taking advantage of new technological developments. Media facilitates the management of different networks, but also increases a loss of spatiotemporal understanding and leads to group exclusion. In-depth biographical interviews with young professionals in Germany reveal their individual strategies to reconstruct and deconstruct friendship relations across geographical distances. Though managed by a variety of communication media, friendship relations are prone to change over time. This research project explores how communication media influences the definition and selection of friends, while on the other hand complicating becoming friends with new acquaintances.

Jeannine Teichert is a research associate at the Institute for Historic Journalism, Communication and Media Studies at Universität Bremen. She has a background in Journalism, Communication Studies, Media and Political Communication. She has studied in Austria, Germany, The Netherlands and New Zealand. Since completing her Master of Arts, Jeannine has worked in various positions including in marketing, as a communication consultant, and as a lecturer.

*Bring your brown bag lunch