Dr Aimee Hourigan
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Dr Aimee Hourigan is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Culture and Society. Broadly, her research explores how differing sociocultural knowledges and lived experiences inform everyday digital cultures and imagined digital futures, with a further emphasis on practices of digital inclusion, digital sovereignty, and decoloniality.
With a background in digital communication and international development, Aimee has designed and delivered transdisciplinary projects in areas of digital storytelling, media literacies, health communication, disability, youth leadership and politics, and human rights. Most recently, Aimee has collaborated with the State Library of Queensland (to explore the impact of creative computing as a means to support the emerging digital and media literacies of newly-arrived migrant and refugee young people) and the Queenslanders with Disability Network (to identify and co-design pathways to reducing barriers to digital inclusion and the development of digital capabilities by individuals with disability).
In 2023, Aimee was awarded her PhD from the Digital Media Research Centre at the Queensland University of Technology. Her doctoral research, which was conducted in partnership with a group of community co-researchers, explored how a culturally grounded and sovereign approach to digital inclusion could be established amongst/by/within Samoan communities, and further how such an approach could support Samoans to strengthen and enrich efforts towards enacting decolonial digital futures.
Aimee is currently working on an ARC Linkage Project, led by Associate Professor Tanya Notley, which focuses on Australian adults' experiences with identifying, navigating, and assessing misinformation online. The project additionally seeks to explore the role public cultural institutions, such as libraries and museums, can play in designing and delivering targeted media literacy programs to help adult Australians combat misinformation.
Qualifications
- PhD, 2023, Queensland University of Technology
- Bachelor of Communication, 2015, University of Queensland
- Bachelor of Journalism, 2015, University of Queensland
Area of Research
- Collaborative & Community-Based Research
- Decoloniality
- Digital Inclusion
- Digital Literacies
- Digital Sovereignty
- Critical/Cultural Studies
- Media Education
Selected Publications
Aia-Fa’aleava, A & Hourigan, A 2023, Enacting decolonial digital futures in Samoa: Using digital technologies to strengthen Samoan ways of knowing and being. Presented at the Australia & New Zealand Communication Association Conference, November 21-24, Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand.
Dezuanni, M, Rodriguez, A, Sefton-Green, J, Leaver, T, Bunn, A, Potter, A, Farthing, R, Hourigan, A et al. 2023, Manifesto for a better children’s internet, Digital Child Working Paper 2023-11, Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child, Queensland University of Technology, https://doi.org/10.26187/q42e-6047.
Dezuanni, M, Foth, M, Kennedy, J, Marshall, A, McCosker, A, Mitchell, P, Notley, T, Osman, K, Tucker, J, Hourigan, A, Mamalipurath, J,
Mavoa, J, Aziz, A, Maddox, A, Hampshire, A, & Byrne, M 2023. The Low-Income Families Digital Divide: Digital Inclusion Is Everybody's Business: Key Findings from the ARC Linkage Project Advancing Digital Inclusion in Low-Income Australian Families, https://doi.org/10.25916/cqaa-dq75.
Hourigan, A 2023, ”How much space am I supposed to take?”: understanding ‘digital inclusion for international development’ through fa’asamoa’, AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research, 2022. https://doi.org/10.5210/spir.v2022i0.13024.
Osman, K, Hourigan, A, Coulibaly, S, & Marshall, A 2022, Improving the digital inclusion of newly arrived migrants via community based digital learning workshops. Presented at the Australia & New Zealand Communication Association Conference, November 22-25, Wollongong, New South Wales.
Kaye, DBV, Rodriguez, A, Miles, P, Dezuanni, M, & Hourigan, A 2021, Teaching with TikTok: A storytelling approach for creative digital pedagogies. Presented at the Connected Learning Summit, July 7-30, Virtual event.
Marshall, A, Tsakissiris, A, Dale, A, Williams, Z, Irvine, D, Ryan, G, Wilson, C-A, Hourigan, A, Stephens, D 2021, Solutions for improved digital connectivity in FNQ: building community and disaster resilience in the Gulf Savannah, Gulf Savannah NRM, https://apo.org.au/node/316257.
