Dr Panagiota Alevizou

Page contents > Biography | Research Interests | Peer Reviewed Publications and Conference Papers

Biography

Panagiota specialises in media and cultural studies, with a particular interest in digital media and learning technologies, knowledge systems and user generated content, as well as new forms of literacy.

Her previous position as an LSE Fellow involved teaching a range of MSc seminars including: Theories and Concepts as well as Research Methods in Media and Communications, New Media, Information and Knowledge Systems, Political Communication, and Campaign Politcis. She has also co-ordinated the Research Methods Courses and assisted the director of Graduate Studies in the development of the MSc programmes within the Department.

Prior to joining the LSE in 2006, Panagiota was at the Department of Media and Film, University of Sussex where she worked as a doctoral researcher in Media and Cultural Studies and associate tutor in several undergraduate modules including Media and Politics, Media and Film texts’ analysis and the Political Economy of Media and the Film Industries. She has also participated in several research and consultancy projects including one on Internet Guidance (Illustra Research Limited, Sussex Innovation Centre), on e-commerce and virtual communities (NCR Knowledge Lab) and on the use of educational software (Sussex University, City University).

Prior to her PhD she obtained a Masters in Publishing Studies (University of Stirling, 1997) and a BA in Philosophy from the University of Ioannina (Greece, 1995).

Research Interests

Panagiota’s doctoral thesis (entitled ‘As we Think’: the Emergence and Evolution of Digital Encyclopaedias) explores the relationship between information technology, culture and knowledge. More specifically, it has researched the historical and more recent sites of production, textuality and audiencing of specific online encyclopaedias in comparison to new media landscapes and alongside established archival traditions (including those of the museum and the library). This involved rigorously researching a range of cultural forms and media genres within the early and more recent histories of media, computing and information networks to explore changing formations of and assumptions on value and literacy, intellectual orders and forms of authority as well as on notions of universalism and totality. It also involved examining wikis and other knowledge-based social software in comparison to commercial online encyclopaedias and other authoritative hypertext systems, to critically access issues on collective intelligence.

Panagiota intends to expand her research objectives into the investigation of collaborative knowledge forms enabled by social and open source software/content systems. She intends to identify the cultural practices of collaborative and interactive knowledge production and its affective features. More specifically, she aims to explore the broader connections between journalism and encyclopaedism – or the novel forms that derive from each tradition – focusing on the level of production and on the themes of authority and relevance, trust and credibility.

Having previously researched the production and mediation of corporate campaigns in the field of ICTs, knowledge and education, Panagiota is interested in humanitarian campaigns in two principle ways: firstly, she is interested in identifying the ways that institutional identity (i.e. the global/local reach of a humanitarian agency or charity and its affiliation with a specific cause) may be connected with the generic typology and the flows of the communicative forms that mobilise specific campaign messages; and secondly, she is interested in developing a typology of knowledge that is associated with awareness-raising around humanitarian issues and exploring how these may be used to mediate inscribed forms of action.

Broader research interests revolve around: (i) the cultural field in the creative industries;; (ii) governance in open source/content communities; (iii) intellectual property and the public domain; and, (iv) humanitarian communication and mediated forms of public engagement.
 

Selected Publications and Conference Papers

Alevizou, P. (2008) ‘Authorship, Authority and Citizenship: Discourses of Participation in Open Content Communities’ presented at the 51st Annual Conference of the International Association of Media & Communications Researchers (IAMCR), Stockholm, 20-25 July 2008

Alevizou, P. (2010) The Web of Knowledge: Encyclopaedias in the Digital Age, Cambridge: Polity (forthcoming)

Alevizou, P. (2008) ‘Beyond Technology: Children’s Learning in the Age of Digital Culture’ in Children and Society, Vol. 22, pp. 70-72 (book review)

Alevizou, P.(2007) ‘Collective Intelligence and the Cult of Open Production: Critical Reflections on Theory and Methodology’ presented at Ecrea Digital Culture and Communication Section Workshop: Digital Media: European Perspectives?, University of Sussex, 1-3 November 2007

Alevizou, P. (2007) ‘Knowledge Sharing and Encyclopaedias in the Digital Media Age, presented at the Annual Conference of the International Association of Media & Communications Researchers (IAMCR), Paris 23-25 July 2007

Alevizou, P. (2006) ‘Encyclopedia or Cosmopedia? Collective Intelligence for Knowledge Technospaces’, proceedings of the Second Wikimania Conference, 4-6 August 2006, University of Harvard Law School, Cambridge, Massachusetts, http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proceedings:PA1

Alevizou, P. (2005) ‘Digital Generations: Children, Young People and New Media in Education, Communication & Information, Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 83-90

Alevizou, P. (2004) ‘Digital Encyclopaedias and the (Info)rmal Learning Game: From Producer Discourses to Textual Practices’, paper presented in Digital Generations: Children, Young People and New Media, Institute of Education, London, July 2004

Alevizou, P. (2002) 'To wire or not to wire? Encyclopaedia Britannica versus Microsoft Encarta', Educational Technology & Society, Volume 5, Issue 1, pp. 163-168 http://ifets.ieee.org/periodical/vol_1_2002/alevizou.pdf

Alevizou, P. (2000) 'Exploring Relationship Building and Community in Computer Mediated Environments: Analysis of Practices on the Auction Community of eBay', working paper, What+if, The Research Journal of the NCR Knowledge Lab, Vol. 3 (working paper)

Alevizou, P. (1999) 'New Media and Cybergenres: Methodological Challenges for Analysing the 'New' in Digital Media', in Armitage, J. & Roberts, J. (eds.) (1999), Exploring Cybersociety: Social, Political, Economic and Cultural Issues, Vol. 1, pp. 15-42, ISBN: 0953645010
 

Contact Details
Room W201
Department of Media and Communications
London School of Economics and Political Science
Houghton Street
London WC2A 2AE
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7955 6420
Fax: +44 (0) 20 7955 7248

Email: p.alevizou@lse.ac.uk

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Page last updated on 25 November 2008

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