I'm Lecturer in Future Media in the School of Media, Music and Performance at the university of Salford. Trained to be a sociologist who largely uses qualitative research methodologies and methods and experienced in interdisciplinary research, my main work has investigated user participatory cultures and community-based innovation, especially the socio-technical dynamics in those communities that develop open source technologies and services (hardware and/or software). Membership of these open innovation communities is usually loosely defined, such that whoever share the same interest or a constellation of practices (in the sense of “a community of practice”) can be part of the community. Interactions in these communities are often socio-technical: members not only interact with each other but also with technologies (software, source code, infrastructures, computers, hardware). Also, members of these communities usually are not constrained by geographical locations. As such, inventing, adopting and learning to manipulate new information and communication technologies to facilitate collaboration and communication between members is key to the success of community building. Time is an interesting element in these communities in several aspects and through this workshop I am hoping to develop methodologies and conceptual frameworks for understanding the role of time in this body of work.

As a member of the CRESC my work takes a time-series perspective to researching the changing role of community news media in a digital age. My work adopts a multi-disciplinary approach combining sociology, supply chain management, journalism and digital economics. The research question relates to how local communities will receive their news in the future. I prefer discursive and narrative-based research methods and this will be my approach to this workshop.

Dr Greenhill is a Senior Lecturer at the Manchester Business School, University of Manchester. Dr Greenhill has an extensive research and publication list exploring cultural practices of online communities. Dr Greenhill along with Dr Gary Graham is currently researching the changing role of the city, local communities and their use of community news media in the digital age. Both time and space play a major role in the preliminary findings of their research. Thurman (2010) has argued that the advance of the social media/Web 2.0 is eroding away the timeliness, relevance and utility of the local news product. However our research indicates that community news media firms are not a dying breed as predicted by Meyer (2004; 2008), but are evolving over time from product supplier into a multimedia content service provider. In response to the challenges of the internet, many media firms are retaining their community connectivity and therefore influence - for being trusted sources of locally produced news, analysis and investigative reporting about public affairs. However, there are concerns that news media organizations are moving online into the (virtual) community space rather than creating their own space. This is potentially detrimental to community connectivity and temporal belonging and raises questions over whether consumers (local community groups) will be willing over time to interact in these spaces or whether they will wish to create/find their own spaces. This paper presents the preliminary findings of research exploring time and the changing role of local communities and their use of community news media in the digital age.

I am a Lecturer in Communication and Media Studies at Loughborough University. I joined the Department of Social Sciences on completion of my PhD in the summer of 2007 and have recently been appointed as Assistant Editor of the journal Media, Culture and Society. My research interests include the mediation of time and memory but extend more generally into cultural consumption, media reception and the politics of representation in everyday life. My concern with time and community emerges from the ongoing research project Media of Remembering (conducted with Professor Michael Pickering and Dr Nicola Allett) funded by the Leverhulme trust, which explores how people belonging to different social and cultural groups within local communities develop remembering practices using commonplace media technologies. This work has developed our thinking about time and community in a number of ways. Firstly, communication and representation seem to us to be at the heart of community’s construction and negotiation of time and their experiences of it. Secondly, in working with different ethnic minority and local communities, spatial and temporal disruptions and dislocations have frequently been central to their collective experience. Social remembering practices and cultural memory resources have emerged as crucial in navigating these experiences. Thirdly, even in what may seem to be the most personal of memories, the marks of social experience and notions of community seem to be in play. In this sense we have been thinking about the time of individuals and time of communities as mutually constitutive.

Educated in Russia and in England (Philosopher’s Diploma, St. Petersburg State University and PhD in Philosophy, Centre for Professional Ethics, UCLAN), Elena Fell has an insider’s view of two distinct cultures, which helps her to grasp the specificity of intercultural communication and communication between diverse communities. Elena’s research project which will explore the relationship between communities and the future (carried out jointly with Dr Johan Siebers as Principal Investigator) will naturally follow from her longstanding interest in the philosophy of time, self and communication. In her PhD thesis Elena explored Bergson’s theory of duration and prepared ground for its further development. After completing her PhD Elena has worked as a Research Assistant at the School of Journalism, Media and Communication, University of Central Lancashire. She is also Editorial Assistant for Empedocles: European Journalfor the Philosophy of Communication.

My involvement in the scoping study on Communities and Future has just began, so the workshop will be an opportunity to gain inspiration for myself and to share with others my previous research findings on time, history and selfhood.

I am an independent researcher whose academic training has primarily been in the area of Literary Studies and Critical Theory. In 2007 I began volunteering at a people’s history museum in Cardiff called the Butetown History & Arts Centre, where I learnt about life stories, oral history and the possibility of using museums as a vehicle for social change. Since then I have pursued an interest in public history and have recently curated an exhibition about feminism in Bristol called Sistershow Revisited. At present I am very interested in creating on and offline spaces where people and historical information can collide. My approach to this workshop will draw on these concerns, specifically exploring the issue of time within researching, documenting and disseminating vulnerable forms of material culture. As a case study I will draw on the Women’s Liberation Music Archive, a recently launched web archive of music from the UK feminist movements of the 1970s and 1980s. I shall be exploring how the creative actions produced by women in these communities, when digitised, has the capacity to transform the temporality of contemporary cultural memory.

In addition to being a theme four member within CRESC I have also been involved in a group exploring issues of spacing, timing and organizing since 1999. This group has a keen interest in how ideas of repetition and difference and stability and change are conceptualised and in recent years there has been more of an emphasis on ideas of images and signs in relation to space and time. In particular, I am interested in how we understand intensities, affect, assemblages and acts of engagement with regards to the process and practices of organizing. My empirical research has been conducted within mental health care in order to explore certain information practices, standards and forms of organizing, as well as a national newspaper printing factory.