Larissa Hjorth

Core Members

Larissa Hjorth is a Distinguished Professor, creative practitioner, and digital ethnographer in the School of Media & Communication at RMIT University. Hjorth has two decades experience working in cross-cultural, interdisciplinary, collaborative projects exploring the social life (death and afterlife) of mobile media.  

Since 2000, Hjorth has been researching the socio-cultural dimensions of mobile media in the Asia–Pacific region. Hjorth has published over 100 publications on the topic. Recent publications include Haunting Hands (with Cumiskey, 2017), Understanding Social Media (with Hinton, 2nd Edition, 2019), Creative Practice Ethnographies (with Harris, Jungnickel & Coombs, 2020) and Ambient Play (with Richardson, 2020).

Hjorth has occupied research leadership roles for a decade and is currently an Australian Research Council Future Fellow (2023-2027) exploring the cultural perceptions of grief in media as well as first CI on an Australian Council Research Linkage with ACMI and AGaMA on social digital museum futures.

Much of her participatory art projects seek to provide playful critical reflection on quotidian environment and media practices from climate change and Big Brother to what happens to our data after we die (#dataofthedead). Recent exhibitions include Model Citizen (RMIT Gallery, February 2019).

Publications

Academia

Research Repository

Personal website

http://www.larissahjorth.net/

Labs

Method Lab 

DERC's flagship space for testing innovative methods for studying data, digital culture, and disruptive tech.

Digital Domesticity, Sustainability, and the Everyday

Digital Domesticity, Sustainability, and the Everyday examines the role of everyday life practices and homes as increasingly central hubs of digital engagement and smart infrastructure.

Creativity, Learning, Digital Arts, and Design

Creativity, Learning, Digital Arts, and Design positions research participants as ‘creative agents’ and authors of their own experience.

Digital Inclusion, Mobility, and Activism

The research program examines the challenges and potentials of digital participation as this relates to access and inclusion, connectivity, networks and political activism, gig or micro work, and mobility and migration.

Projects

Methods Masterclass Series

Methods Masterclass Series 2023 offers advanced training in creative practice, digital ethnographic, and social science tools. Co sponsored by the Enabling Impact Platforms at RMIT.

Museum Digital Social Futures: Audience Living Lab as incubator for socially-engaged and situated media innovation

This project takes a future orientation to examine the role of digital media in the engagement, experience, literacy and inclusion of museum audiences.

The Mourning After: Grief rituals, affective witnessing and mobile media 

this ARC Future Fellowship aims to shed light on the process of giving grief visibility through mourning rituals, highlighting how this can help honour the loss, develop resilience, and enhance...

Publications

Work, care and creativity in a time of COVID-19: creatively mapping presence bleed in the home

‘Unprepared for the depth of my feelings’ – Capturing grief in older people through research poetry

The emergent potential of mundane media: Playing Pokémon GO in Badalona, Spain

Careful Digital Kinship: Understanding Multispecies Digital Kinship, Choreographies of Care and Older Adults During the Pandemic in Australia

Careful attunements: the choreographing of care and affective witnessing through media practices during, and after, crisis

The place of data: Mobile media, loss and data in life, death and afterlife

Higher Degree Students (HDR) during COVID-19: Disrupted routines, uncertain futures, and active strategies of resilience and belonging

Digitised caring intimacies: More-than-human intergenerational care in Japan

(In Press) An ethnographic co-design approach to promoting diversity in the games industry

Capturing Urban Play at the Digital-Material Nexus: an Interfacial and Social Practice Research Approach

Live-streaming, games and politics of gender performance: The case of Nüzhubo in China

“I wish they could have answered their phones”: Mobile communication in mass shootings

Social surveillance and Let’s Play: A regional case study of gaming in Manila slum communities

Mobility through Games: Asian international students and gaming cultures in Melbourne

Storing and sharing: Everyday relationships with digital material

Situating ‘careful surveillance’

Locative-Media Ethics: A Call for Protocols to Guide Interactions of People, Place, and Technologies

Supervised Play: Intimate Surveillance and Children’s Mobile Media Usage

Haptic Play: Understanding Hybrid Play through Pokemon GO

Ambient Play: Understanding Mobile Games in Everyday Life

‘Playing’ in Transmissions: Critical Tactics for Making and Communicating Research

Inventive Approaches to Data Tracking in More-Than-Human Worlds

The emergent potential of mundane media

Shelfie: A Framework for Designing Material Representations of Physical Activity Data

Understanding Games and Game Cultures

Digital games are one of the most significant media interfaces of contemporary life. Games today interweave with the social, economic, material, and political complexities of living in a digital age. But...

Screen Ecologies

Screen Ecologies examines the relationship of media, art, and climate change in the Asia-Pacific region.

Digital Media Practices in Households

This book ethnographically explores how households are being understood, articulated and defined by digital media practices.

Ambient Play

In Ambient Play, we examine how mobile gameplay fits into our day-to-day lives.

Exploring Minecraft: Ethnographies of Play and Creativity

Drawing on ethnographic insights, this book seeks to take Minecraft seriously as a cultural practice and an interdisciplinary phenomenon.

Haunting Hands: Mobile Media Practices and Loss

Haunting Hands looks at the consequences of digital media's ubiquitous presence in our lives, in particular the representing, sharing, and remembering of loss.

Digital Ethnography Principles and Practice

This sharp, innovative book champions the rising significance of ethnographic research on the use of digital resources around the world.

News

MAPPING MOODS FOR FUTURE CITIES

September 15, 2022

Are you interested? Please let us know if you would like to participate in a ‘Mapping Moods for Future Cities’ workshop, an initiative to explore how the maps of our...

DERC’s research on COVID continues to surge ahead

July 21, 2020

We may have been in lockdown, but that didn’t stop DERC researchers from launching several projects to study the pandemic.