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Dr. Ruth Cherrington
Senior Teaching Fellow, CTCCS, University of Warwick
I trained as a sociologist, gaining my Masters degree from the London School of Economics. I ventured into the world of advertising for a while before becoming a lecturer in the tertiary sector. I taught a variety of courses in England and overseas including China and Bulgaria. I gained my doctorate from SOAS in 1995 for my research on youth in contemporary China and this formed the basis of several publications. Whilst living back in England in the early 90s, I took an interesting diversion into the area of teaching and learning methods in UK adult education and published several articles about the results. I have now been involved in teaching cultural and media studies for over ten years and have presented many conference papers in these fields.
Recently, I have in many ways gone back to my 'roots' as I now researching something very close to 'home': a local working man?s social club in Coventry. By documenting its history and development in the post-war period, many social and cultural trends are being looked at with links made to the local housing estate in Coventry where the club is based (which is also where I grew up), its residents and their changing fortunes. Issues of social class, gender, social diversity and community are all part of my ongoing work. |
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Young People, Technological Moral Panics and (Inter)Cultural Citizenship
This presentation will attempt to bring together some of the key issues that have been raised in the past few years about the impact and influence of new technology, particularly the internet and mobile phones. The focus will be on the anxieties and concerns surrounding young people, since it is usually youth and children who are viewed, rightly or wrongly, as being in danger from the 'dark forces' of the various media forms. It is also young people we are concerned with as educators so this theme has direct relevance to our everyday professional lives. The aim is to contextualise the main issues and concerns and offer some practical tips in how to turn these into teaching themes, content and authentic ELT materials. There will be some discussion of how previous researchers and commentators have attempted to make sense of media influence on young people and to what extent their arguments and explanations have relevance for the current context. The rapid proliferation of new media forms, technological gadgets and the increasing ownership and accessibility to these can leave us gasping for breath particularly where young people are concerned. There will some chance here to take stock of some of the key developments and hopefully catch our breath a bit. Some of the 'moral panics', for example, include long-standing ones about violent and sexual content but there are also others such as the negative effect on language use and knowledge. Is txtg bad 4 u? On the positive side, commentators point to the increase in cultural and intercultural citizenship which the worldwide web might be leading to in terms of contemporary youth. The presenter would like participants to consider some of these issues and bring along some of their own examples, with any materials (they can be Polish articles) within this area. Dr. Ruth Cherrington CTCCS University of Warwick |