Monika Buscher

Monika_BuscherDr. Monika Buscher is a Senior Lecturer at Lancaster University. She is the Director of mobilities.lab – an interdisciplinary collaboration between several different departments at Lancaster and a range of international academic and industrial partners. Mobilities.lab research connects different fields of research: Mobilities Research, Design, Ethnomethodology, Science and Technology Studies, Participatory Design, Computer Supported Cooperative Work, and Ubiquitous Computing.

Her interests lie in how people collaborate, at work or elsewhere. Everyday material and epistemic practices – on the move or in situ – including experiences and practices of place-making, distributed collaboration, collective intelligence are the focus of her studies.

Buscher’s research develops a deeper understanding of the opportunities and risks inherent in the informationalization of increasingly mobile ways of living, with the aim of informing more socially and ethically circumspect, productive innovation in technology and practice. On the one hand, digital technologies allow societies to detect and deal with risks more effectively. On the other, disasters call for exceptions to normal rules (e.g. of data protection), and digital technologies can ease exceptions that may have far-reaching, positive and negative unintended consequences.

Her approach is ethnographic and analytically rooted in ethnomethodology, science and technology studies, mobilities research and phenomenology. Her work critically informs participatory, interdisciplinary socio-technical innovation. Furthermore, she actively co-design and facilitates the appropriation of cutting edge ubiquitous computing visions, technologies, platforms, and content in different settings (see, for example, BridgeWorkspace and PalCom).

The book series Changing Mobilities, which she edits together wih Peter Adey, invites contributions that address the empirical realities of changing mobilities and opportunities to inform design, policy and social change.