Sheffield Hallam University

Faculty Member, C3RI

About

@JohnPostill (Twitter)

I am an anthropologist specialising in the study of digital media. I hold a BA in anthropology from the University of Durham, in England, an MA in social anthropology from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, and a PhD in social anthropology from University College London (UCL). Currently I am Senior Lecturer in Media at Sheffield Hallam University and a Fellow of the Digital Anthropology Programme at UCL.

I am presently involved in two research projects. In September 2010 I took up a one-year Senior Fellowship at the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3), Open University of Catalonia in Barcelona where I investigated the uses of social media for activism in collaboration with Sarah Pink, most recently in connection with the #SpanishRevolution. I am now writing up the findings from this research in the form of book chapters, articles and a book.

In addition, I am setting up an international comparative study of mobile phones in the global South entitled Mobile Livelihoods. Theoretically I am interested in the possible media applications of practice theory, in rethinking sociality and related concepts, and in how to theorise the elusive relationship between digital media and sociocultural change.

I have lived and worked in various fields in Spain, Britain, Indonesia, Japan, Germany, Malaysia and Romania. Previously I held research fellowships at Cambridge University, Bremen University and the Academy of Art and Design in Karlsruhe and taught at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London, Staffordshire University and the National School of Political Science and Administration (SNSPA) in Bucharest.

My first book, Media and Nation Building, was published by Berghahn in 2006. This study draws on historical and ethnographic research to explain how the Iban, an indigenous people of Borneo, have been an integral part of Malaysia’s nation-building project since independence in 1963 – an ongoing project that relies on a range of state and commercial media. My second ethnography, Localizing the Internet, based on fieldwork among Internet activists in Peninsular Malaysia, was published in 2011. I have also edited a volume with Birgit Bräuchler entitled Theorising Media and Practice (2010), also with Berghahn.

I am the editor, with Mark A. Peterson, of  Berghahn’s Anthropology of Media Series, the convenor of the EASA Media Anthropology Network and a member of the editorial board of Anthropology Today.

John Postill
Sheffield, 4 October 2011

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