I’m currently an ESRC funded doctoral student and graduate tutor in the Sociology Department at Goldsmiths, University of London (2008-). The present title of my thesis is, ‘Mediation & Co-constitution: A Study of Design and Engagement Across Young People’s Virtual Spaces’, for which this blog and website will provide a public research journal. My research primarily focuses on the processes and practices of design and engagement around young people’s virtual spaces (such as virtual worlds and other online social spaces). This study has involved research with employees at two significant media companies (the BBC and Sulake) and also the users of their online spaces. Through this research i’ve been attempting to understand how the design of children and young people’s virtual spaces has been mediated between ‘adult-producers’ and ‘child-users’ and how the roles of producer/adult and user/child come to be constituted within this process.
I’ve been a student at the Goldsmiths department of Sociology for the duration of both my undergraduate (BA History & Sociology) and postgraduate studies (MA Social Research). For my MA dissertation I carried out a research study titled ‘Regulating Young Children and Technology: An Analysis of How Parents Create and Employ Constructions of Age, Childhood and the Internet’. This study explored the regulatory experiences of parents from a predominately working class primary school. My research skills extend to both quantitative (Multivariate, Multiple Regression, Path Analysis) and qualitative methods and forms of analysis. Over the course of my PhD i’ve attempted to expand on my quantitative skill set through exploring Social Network Analysis techniques. I’m a member of the BSA (British Sociological Association).
I’m currently a graduate tutor at the department of Sociology, Goldsmiths, where I teach on the ‘Researching Society and Culture’ methods module. I’ve taught on this course for the last two years and also have experience as an internal examiner for undergraduate and postgraduate courses. In the academic year 2010-2011 I was nominated for a Peake teaching award.
My LinkedIn profile can be accessed from here and you can follow me on twitter here. You can also find out more information about me on Academia.edu here.
To get in touch, please contact me via my e-mail l.berriman (at) gold.ac.uk
