Katie Ward – författare

This book provides an overview of a key concept in media and technology studies: domestication. Theories around domestication shed light upon the process in which a technology changes its status from outrageous novelty to an aspect of everyday life which is taken for granted. The contributors collect past, current and future applications of the concept of domestication, critically reflect on its theoretical legacy, and offer comments about further development.

The first part of Domestication of Media and Technology provides an overview of the conceptual development and theory of domestication. In the second part of the book, contributors look at a diverse range of empirical studies that use the domestication approach to examine the dynamics between users and technologies. These studies include:

Mobile information and communications techologies (ICTs) and the transformation of the relationship between private and the public spheres Home-based internet use: the two-way dynamic between the household and its social environmentDisadvantaged women in Europe undertaking introductory internet coursesUrban middle-class families in China who embrace ICTs and view them as instruments of upward mobility and symbols of success The book offers valuable insights for both experienced researchers and students looking for an introduction to the concept of domestication.

Contributors: Maria Bakardjieva, University of Calgary; Thomas Berker, Norwegian University of Science and Technology; Leslie Haddon, Essex University; Maren Hartmann, University of Erfurt; Deirdre Hynes, Dublin City University; Sun Sun Lim, National University of Singapore; Anna Maria Russo Lemor, University of Colorado at Boulder; David Morley, Goldsmiths College, University of London; Jo Pierson, TNO-STB, Delft, Netherlands; Yves Punie, Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS) in Seville; Els Rommes, Nijmegen University; Roger Silverstone, London School of Economics and Political Science; Knut H. Sørensen, Norwegian University of Science and Technology; Katie J. Ward, University of Sheffield.

'Funny, poignant, elegantly written, I adored this novel' Amanda Hodgkinson'Wonderful... It's thrillingly written, delicately accomplished and will live in my head for a long time' Lloyd ShepherdCara is a dedicated neuroscientist with a research post at Cambridge. Heather is her almost-stepdaughter, drifting towards the end of school, trying to picture a future that fits her. Paul is Cara's partner and Heather's father - and when he suddenly disappears with no explanation, these two very different women, legally and biologically unrelated, need to figure out their place in each other's life.Set in Cambridge and Las Vegas, each city in its way as artificial as the other, Pathways is about connections forged and connections failed, and how people struggle to understand themselves and each other. A novel of both the heart and the head, it is perceptive, wry and unexpectedly moving, a love story of deep originality and intelligence.

An orphan poses nervously for a Renaissance maestro in medieval Siena, and an artist's servant girl in seventeenth-century Amsterdam snatches a moment away from her work to lose herself in tales of knights and battles. A woman reading in a Shoreditch bar catches the eye of a young man who takes her picture, and a Victorian medium holds a book that she barely acknowledges while she waits for the exposure.

'Funny, poignant, elegantly written, I adored this novel' Amanda Hodgkinson'Wonderful... It's thrillingly written, delicately accomplished and will live in my head for a long time' Lloyd ShepherdCara is a dedicated neuroscientist with a research post at Cambridge. Heather is her almost-stepdaughter, drifting towards the end of school, trying to picture a future which fits her. Paul is Cara's partner and Heather's father - and when he suddenly disappears with no explanation, these two very different women, legally and biologically unrelated, need to figure out their place in each other's life.Set in Cambridge and Las Vegas, each city in its way as artificial as the other, Pathways is about connections forged and connections failed, and how people struggle to understand themselves and each other. A novel of both the heart and the head, it is perceptive, wry and unexpectedly moving, a love story of deep originality and intelligence.

'A compelling and original novel' JESSICA CORNWELL'You'll love sinking into the skin of each character, chapter by chapter . . . Fabulous' EVA VERDECara versus Heather. Cara is a neuroscientist trying to make a contribution to the field; Heather, her almost-stepdaughter, is trying to find ways to express herself. When their family life breaks down, it causes a rift between them that may never heal again. Set partly in the research labs of Cambridge - and partly on the luminous streets of Las Vegas - these two different worldviews seem irreconcilable.Pathways is a novel of both the heart and the head. You will be drawn into the interwoven lives of Heather and Cara, who struggle to understand and accept one another. Fascinating, perceptive and intimate, Pathways is about fragile connections, and the need for authenticity.'The most original love story I have read in a long time. Funny, poignant, elegantly written, I adored this novel' AMANDA HODGKINSON'Katie Ward unleashes the full force of her poetic instincts and intellectual rigour on the endlessly refracting experience that is the human mind in the human body' KATE WORSLEY'Wonderful . . . It's thrillingly written, delicately accomplished and will live in my head for a long time' LLORED SHEPHERD