A.S. Richterich

I am an associate professor in Digital Cultures at the Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences. My research explores social practices emerging in interaction with digital technology. I studied sociology at the University of Auckland (New Zealand) and media economics at the University of Siegen (Germany), where I also completed my PhD in digital media studies in 2012. With an educational background in sociology, media studies and economics, I am passionate about empirically engaged and interdisciplinary research. My work has been published in international, refereed journals such as Information, Communication & Society, Health Sociology, and Learning, Media, & Technology.

From 2019-2021, I was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellow at the University of Sussex, supervised by Professor Tim Jordan (now UCL). Based at the Sussex Humanities Lab, I conducted qualitative, notably ethnographic research on experiential learning, digital innovation, and tech-political practices in hacker and maker communities. My research highlights the opportunities associated with hacker- and makerspaces (HMS), especially by showing how communally embedded ‘learning-by-making’ can facilitate digital expertise and DIY creativity. At the same time, I examine factors of in- and exclusion in HMS, highlighting for example who is likely to benefit from the learning opportunities potentially afforded by different types of communities. Building on my research in HMS – notably inspired by debates on communities’ common lack of diversity, I am now conducting research on spaces/settings that minoritised groups have found(ed) for their engagement with digital technology. Parts of this research are presented in my papers on women-only groups for developers and feminist hackerspaces.

You can find a list of my publications here.