Our aim is to investigate the relationships between a technologically mediated knowledge economy, mobile/nomadic work practices and home life as part of a new collaborative research project. One of the goals of the project is to pull together concerns and issues pertaining to the societal and identity-related matters of “being mobile”, and to the interaction design and computer-supported cooperative work tradition studies of workplace and technology use. A central aim of this study is to examine the new work/home-life patterns that are emerging, how these can be accounted for and their gendered implications for work and home. Research Questions: How do high-skilled women and men working in creative industries, IT and higher education in the Limerick area experience and represent their work/life practices? To what extent has the expansion of wireless space enabled work to be done ‘on the move’, in different places and between places? How might the use of embedded and mobile technologies blur the boundaries between work life and home life? How are work and home life mediated by technologies? What is the relative significance of: the reorganisation of work in the new technologically mediated knowledge economy; shifts that have taken place in the ‘gender regime’; other factors in how work and home life are currently lived in the Limerick area? Methodology: we aim to combine ethnographic methods and Interaction Design methods in innovative ways to study nomadic work/life practices. Sample: High-skilled workers in creative industries (e.g. advertising, architecture), IT and higher education in the Limerick area. Equal numbers of women and men. The Project (2008-2012) is funded by HEA PRTLI 4, within the Irish Social Sciences Platform Duration: 1 September, 2008 -> 1 September, 2012
Main contact in IDC:
e: luigina.ciolfi@ul.ie
List of IDC-based members:
