Heather Horst
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Heather A. Horst is a
social anthropologist Social anthropology is the study of patterns of behaviour in human societies and cultures. It is the dominant constituent of anthropology throughout the United Kingdom and much of Europe, where it is distinguished from cultural anthropology. In t ...
and media studies academic and author who writes on material culture, mobility, and the mediation of social relations. In 2020 she became the Director of the Institute for Culture and Society at
Western Sydney University Western Sydney University, formerly the University of Western Sydney, is an Australian multi-campus public research university in the Greater Western region of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. The university in its current form was founde ...
where she is a Professor and is also a lead investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society. Prior to this she was a professor of Media and Communications at the University of Sydney from 2017 and Vice Chancellor's Senior Research Fellow in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia from 2011. She has also been a Research Fellow in the MA program in
digital anthropology Digital anthropology is the anthropological study of the relationship between humans and digital-era technology. The field is new, and thus has a variety of names with a variety of emphases. These include techno-anthropology, digital ethnogra ...
at University College London.


Career

Horst has a B.A. from
University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota Twin Cities (historically known as University of Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint ...
, an M.A. from
University of California, Santa Barbara The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Barbara County, California, United States. Tracing its roots back to 1891 as an ...
, and a Ph.D. from
University College, London University College London (Trade name, branded as UCL) is a Public university, public research university in London, England. It is a Member institutions of the University of London, member institution of the Federal university, federal Uni ...
(UCL). Horst served as an Associate Project Scientist for DML Research Hub in the Department of Humanities Research Institute at
University of California, Irvine The University of California, Irvine (UCI or UC Irvine) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Irvine, California, United States. One of the ten campuses of the University of California system, U ...
, an Honorary Research Associate in Department of Anthropology and a faculty of Social & Historical Sciences at
University College London University College London (Trade name, branded as UCL) is a Public university, public research university in London, England. It is a Member institutions of the University of London, member institution of the Federal university, federal Uni ...
. Horst's research focuses upon the relationship between place, space and new media. Her research has been published in a range of journals, including ''
Social Anthropology Social anthropology is the study of patterns of behaviour in human societies and cultures. It is the dominant constituent of anthropology throughout the United Kingdom and much of Europe, where it is distinguished from cultural anthropology. In t ...
'', ''
Current Anthropology ''Current Anthropology'' is a peer-reviewed anthropology academic journal published by the University of Chicago Press for the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. Founded in 1959 by the anthropologist Sol Tax1907-1995. ''Curren ...
'', ''
Journal of Material Culture ''Journal of Material Culture'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal that publishes papers in the fields of Cultural Studies and Anthropology. The journal's editor is Hannah Knox (University College London); the other members of the Material Cultur ...
'', ''Global Networks'', ''Identities'', ''
International Journal of Communication The ''International Journal of Communication'' is an open access peer-reviewed academic journal covering studies on communication. The founding editor-in-chief was Larry Gross (USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism) and it is publi ...
'' and the ''Caribbean Review of Gender Studies''. She has been a guest editor for special issues of the ''International Journal of Communication'', ''Journal of Material Culture'', ''International Journal of Cultural Studies'' and ''Home Cultures''.about-Heather Horst
Accessed: 22 September 2011
She is also the co-author of ''The Cell Phone: An Anthropology of Communication'' (Horst and Miller, Berg, 2006) and ''Hanging Out, Messing Around and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with Digital Media'' (MIT Press, 2009, Ito, et al.). Horst was elected a Fellow of the
Australian Academy of the Humanities The Australian Academy of the Humanities was established by Royal Charter in 1969 to advance scholarship and public interest in the humanities in Australia. It operates as an independent not-for-profit organisation partly funded by the Australi ...
in 2023.


Research

Heather Horst's research focuses on the relationship between material culture and the role of objects and artifacts in mediating social relations, with particular attention to mobility and the global movement of people, objects, goods, media and capital in different national and transnational spaces. ;The Materiality of Personhood The idea of starting this research came from Heather horst's 'dissertation worked in Mandeville, Jamaica, which explored the imagination, construction and transformation of the meanings of ‘home’ among
Jamaicans Jamaicans are the citizens of Jamaica and their descendants in the Jamaican diaspora. The vast majority of Jamaicans are of Sub-Saharan African descent, with minorities of Europeans, Indians, Chinese, Middle Eastern, and others of mixed a ...
who migrated to
Britain Britain most often refers to: * Great Britain, a large island comprising the countries of England, Scotland and Wales * The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, a sovereign state in Europe comprising Great Britain and the north-eas ...
after
World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...
and returned to Jamaica to retire in the 1990s.' In this research, Heather Horst works on the relationship between
material culture Material culture is culture manifested by the Artifact (archaeology), physical objects and architecture of a society. The term is primarily used in archaeology and anthropology, but is also of interest to sociology, geography and history. The fie ...
,
property Property is a system of rights that gives people legal control of valuable things, and also refers to the valuable things themselves. Depending on the nature of the property, an owner of property may have the right to consume, alter, share, re ...
and
personhood Personhood is the status of being a person. Defining personhood is a controversial topic in philosophy and law and is closely tied with legal and political concepts of citizenship, equality, and liberty. According to law, only a legal person (ei ...
by understanding the materiality of the house assert, recognize and negotiate personhood in colonial and postcolonial Jamaica. ; New Media, Technology and Society In order to examine the relationship between new media in this research, Heather Horst began to study on the 'global and transnational processes involved in the construction of the ‘digital divide’ as part of a multi-national comparative study funded by the British
Department for International Development The Department for International Development (DFID) was a Departments of the Government of the United Kingdom, ministerial department of the government of the United Kingdom, from 1997 to 2020. It was responsible for administering foreign aid ...
(DFID) to examine the implications of new information and communication technologies in
Ghana Ghana, officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country in West Africa. It is situated along the Gulf of Guinea and the Atlantic Ocean to the south, and shares borders with Côte d’Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, and Togo to t ...
,
India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...
,
Jamaica Jamaica is an island country in the Caribbean Sea and the West Indies. At , it is the third-largest island—after Cuba and Hispaniola—of the Greater Antilles and the Caribbean. Jamaica lies about south of Cuba, west of Hispaniola (the is ...
and
South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...
working with Daniel Miller.' Also, over the past four years, Horst's study focuses on '
social change Social change is the alteration of the social order of a society which may include changes in social institutions, social behaviours or social relations. Sustained at a larger scale, it may lead to social transformation or societal transformat ...
and the power dynamics surrounding the provisioning, access to and use of new media and technology by shifting my attention to the heart of the global technology industry.'


Projects


Information Society: Emergent Technologies and Development in the South

It is a large-scale DFID-funded project which compared the relationship between
Information and communications technology Information and communications technology (ICT) is an extensional term for information technology (IT) that stresses the role of unified communications and the integration of telecommunications (telephone lines and wireless signals) and computer ...
(ICTs) and development in Ghana, India, Jamaica and South Africa. As a part of it, Heather Horst was examining development, new information and communication technologies and the '
digital divide The digital divide is the unequal access to information technology, digital technology, including smartphones, tablets, laptops, and the internet. The digital divide worsens inequality around access to information and resources. In the Information ...
'. After completing her dissertation, she began to examine development, new information and communication technologies and the 'digital divide' as part of it.


Digital Youth

During the time at
University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...
prior to joining University of California, Irvine, Horst was holding a position in a research project called Digital Youth which is to address the gap between in-school and out-school experience with a targeted set of ethnographic investigations into three emergent modes of informal learning that young people are practicing using new media technologies: communication, learning, and play by exploring how kids use digital media in their everyday lives. ;Coming of Age in Silicon Valley: Digital Media in Families This study aims to understand the role of digital media in children and youths’ communication, learning, knowledge, play and, in turn, how digital media may affect their relationships with their peers, siblings, parents or other household members. ;Virtual Playgrounds:An Ethnography of Neopets Working with Laura Robinson, Heather Horst, Mizuko Ito and Lou-Anthony Limon designed this project to understand practices and participation of young people using the online gaming site, Neopets.com.


Mobiles, Migrants and Money: A Study of Mobility at the Haitian-Dominican Republic Border

Heather was working with Erin Taylor, and Espelencia Baptiste on this project which investigates the role of mobile phones in the economic and social wellbeing among some of the world's poorest people living at and moving across the border of Haiti and the Dominican Republic.


Publications

;New Media and Society * Free, Social, and Inclusive: Appropriation and Resistance of New Media Technologies in Brazil. International Journal of Communication 5: 437–462, 2011 * New Media in International Contexts: Introduction (with Cara Wallis). International Journal of Communication 5: 463–470, 2011 * Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press. (with
Mizuko Ito , is a Japanese cultural anthropologist and learning scientist. She is Professor in Residence and John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Chair in Digital Media and Learning, and Director of the Connected Learning Lab in the Department of Informatics, ...
, Sonja Baumer, Matteo Bittanti,
danah boyd Danah boyd (stylized in all lowercase, born November 24, 1977 as Danah Michele Mattas) She noted her mother added lowercase 'h' in birth name "danah" for typographical balance, reflecting the lowercase first letter 'd' and later changed her l ...
, Rachel Cody, Rebecca Herr-Stephenson, Patricia G. Lange, Dilan Mahendran, Katynka Z. Martinez, CJ Pascoe, Dan Perkel, Laura Robinson, Christo Sims and Lisa Tripp), 2009Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out Kids Living and Learning with New Media
on The MIT Press Accessed: 22 September 2011
* The Cell Phone: An Anthropology of Communication. New York: Berg Publications (Heather A. Horst and Daniel Miller), 2006 * The Blessings and Burdens of Communication: The Cell Phone in Jamaican Transnational Social Fields. Global Networks: A Journal of Transnational Affairs 6(2): 143–159, 2006 * From
Kinship In anthropology, kinship is the web of social relationships that form an important part of the lives of all humans in all societies, although its exact meanings even within this discipline are often debated. Anthropologist Robin Fox says that ...
to Link-up: Cell Phones and Social Networking in Jamaica. Current Anthropology 46(5): 755-778 (Heather A. Horst and Daniel Miller), 2005 * ‘Cell Phone Come Like a Blessing’: Religion and the Cell Phone in a Rural Jamaican Town. Jamaica Journal 29(1&2): 12-17 (Daniel Miller and Heather A. Horst), 2005 ;
Mobility Mobility may refer to: Social sciences and humanities * Economic mobility, ability of individuals or families to improve their economic status * Geographic mobility, the measure of how populations and goods move over time * Mobilities, a conte ...
and
Transnationalism Transnationalism is a research field and social phenomenon grown out of the heightened interconnectivity between people and the receding economic and social significance of boundaries among nation states. Overview The term "trans-national" was ...
*
Jamaican Americans Jamaican Americans are an ethnic group of West Indian Americans, Caribbean Americans who have full or partial Jamaicans, Jamaican ancestry. The largest proportions of Jamaican Americans live in South Florida and New York City, both of which have ...
. New Immigrants Series. New York: Chelsea House (Heather A. Horst and Andrew Garner), 2006 * Landscaping Englishness: Respectability and Returnees in Mandeville, Jamaica. Caribbean Review of Gender Studies 2(2), 2008 * Planning to Forget: Mobility and Violence in Urban Jamaica. Social Anthropology 16 (1): 51–62, 2008 * ‘You can’t be two places at once’: Rethinking Transnationalism through Return Migration in Jamaica. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 14 (1): 63–83, 2007 * The Most English Town in Jamaica: Myths, Memories and Other Returning Resident Dilemmas. Jamaica Journal 31(1 & 2): 56–61, 2007 ;Materiality of Home and Domestic Space * Landscaping Englishness: Respectability and Returnees in Mandeville, Jamaica. Caribbean Review of Gender Studies 2(2), 2008 * Planning to Forget: Mobility and Violence in Urban Jamaica. Social Anthropology 16(1): 51–62, 2008 * The Most English Town in Jamaica: Myths, Memories and Other Returning Resident Dilemmas. Jamaica Journal 31 (1 & 2): 56–61, 2007 * A Pilgrimage Home: Tombs, Burial and Belonging in Jamaica. Journal of Material Culture 9(1): 11–26, 2004


References


External links


“Heather Horst”
Digital Youth Research
Haitian Monetary Ecologies and Repertoires: A Qualitative Snapshot of Money Transfer and Savings Planning to Forget: Mobility and Violence in Urban JamaicaHeather Horst's blog
Digital Youth Research
Mobile communication in the global south Anthropology and the Individual: A Material Culture Perspective (Berg Publications, 2009) “Heather A Horst”
on The Material World Blog
Special Section: New Media in International Contexts Introduction Institute for Money, Technology and Financial Inclusion
*IMTFI researche
"Heather Horst"
Haitian Monetary Ecologies and Repertoires: A Qualitative Snapshot of Money Transfer and Savings
“Heather A. Horst”
2010 NCTI Technology Innovators Conference
“Heather A. Horst”
on staff directory page at University of California Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI) website {{DEFAULTSORT:Horst, Heather American anthropologists Living people University of Minnesota alumni University of California, Santa Barbara alumni Alumni of University College London Year of birth missing (living people) Fellows of the Australian Academy of the Humanities