UOIT Canada Research Chair receives funding for Digital Culture and Media Lab

Dr. Isabel Pedersen, Canada Research Chair in Digital Life, Media and Culture, has received a $54,000 grant from Canadian Foundation for Innovation’s (CFI) Leader’s Opportunity Fund (LOF) to create the Digital Culture and Media Lab (DeCiMaL) at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology's (UOIT) downtown Oshawa location.

DeCiMaL will support novel research in the emergent field of wearable technologies. Researchers will investigate how reality shifting media and wearable computers impact humans in the context of their digital lives.

“While many scholars write about aspects of new media that already function as phenomena in society, such as social media or smartphones, few investigate media invention before an artifact evolves into a device, consumer product or mass social practice,” explained Dr. Pedersen, Associate Professor, UOIT Faculty of Social Science and Humanities.

The research conducted at DeCiMaL will focus on understanding digital culture at the time a technology is emerging, and will examine the various stages of emergence that occur prior to the final release of a device to the general consumer.