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