Shadow Libraries and Media Access Survey, American Assembly, 2011-
A new project on access to educational materials in universities and media access practices more generally.
Media Piracy in Emerging Economies, SSRC, 2007-present.
An effort to inform a more balanced debate about the social role, costs, and benefits of media piracy in developing economies—especially in relation to film, music, and software. The research is anchored in four country studies—Russia, Brazil, India, and South Africa, and has involves 12 organizations and some 35 team members. The project is funded through a collaboration between the Ford Foundation and Canadian IDRC. Project Site.
The Data Consortium for Media and Communications Policy 2007- present
An effort to mobilize both research and policy attention to access to data and data quality issues in media and communications policymaking, focusing on the FCC and USTR.
Necessary Knowledge for a Democratic Public Sphere, SSRC 2005-2010.
An SSRC program designed to foster collaboration between researchers and advocates on media, communications, and technology policy issues. The program made 44 ‘collaborative grants’ over 3 years to research-advocacy partnerships and developed a community-editable relational database and portal for mapping the field (the Media Research Hub).
The Culture, Creativity and Information Technology Program, SSRC, 2000-2009.
CC&IT was an umbrella for a series of projects that explored the relationship between digital technologies and cultural production. Main activities included:
- Workshops in 2000-2002 that brought ‘techno-artists’ and social scientists together, in an effort to formalize the insights of the former. These led (eventually) to the publication of Structures of Participation in Digital Culture (2008)
- A summer grants program in 2002-2003 dedicated to supporting work on the relationship between digital media and traditional cultural institutions like museums and libraries;
- A series of workshops in 2003 and 2005 called “Intellectual Property, Markets, and Cultural Flows.” These were designed to expand the range of social scientific engagement with Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) issues—at that time a debate overwhelmingly dominated by lawyers
- A collaborative report in 2004-2005 on “The Politics of Open Source Adoption”–an effort to explore the political (not technical) dimensions of municipal and sectoral adoption of open source software.
- A 2006 project on “The Propertization of the Traditional Arts in Indonesia,” exploring the commodification of and impact of new technologies on the traditional arts in Indonesia.
- A 2008-2009 collaboration with the Van Alen Institute on social science/design conversations about urban sustainability.
Projects funded by the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations.
The Program on the Arts, SSRC, 2000-2004.
An effort to strengthen and expand the range of social scientific engagement with artistic and cultural production. A grants program and workshops on key problems in the study of the arts were the primary focus.
Director of SSRC Web Development 2000-2006
