ICS Welcomes New Director, Professor Heather Horst

The Institute for Culture and Society is pleased to welcome Professor Heather Horst as its new Director as of February 2020.

Heather joins us from The University of Sydney, where she was a Professor with the Department of Media and Communication.

A sociocultural anthropologist researching material culture and the mediation of social relations through digital media and technology, Heather is well-known for her work in digital anthropology, studies of media and technology in families, and research into mobile media in developing contexts.

Her current research examines the circulation of music in Melanesia through mobile technologies as part of an Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Project led by Dr Denis Crowdy (Macquarie University) with the Wontok Foundation and Further Arts Vanuatu. She is also developing new work examining fashion, creativity and Automated Decision Making in Fiji and the Pacific, and has recently been awarded an ARC Discovery Grant for this project.

In addition to the ARC, Heather’s work has been directly supported by international partners and organisations including the European Union (Horizon 20/20 grant) and ABC International Development.

At The University of Sydney in 2018, she developed the SocioTech Futures Lab with her colleagues Professor Gerard Goggin and Dr Marcus Carter, and from 2012-2015 she was a co-Founder and Director of RMIT’s Digital Ethnography Research Centre. She has also worked in number of large research centres in the USA including the Digital Media and Learning Research Hub at the University of California Humanities Research Institute, the Institute for Social Change at UC Berkeley and the Annenberg Center for Communication at the University of Southern California.

Heather commenced as ICS Director on 3 February 2020.