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Graduate Program in Communication & Culture

Faculty Profiles

Isabel Pedersen

Media & Culture

University   Ryerson University
E-Mail Address   ipederse@ryerson.ca
Phone Number   (416) 979-5000, ext. 6387
Office Location   RCC-360-G
Office Hours   TBA


Education

B.A. (Toronto); M.A.(Waterloo); Ph.D. (Waterloo)

Biography

Professor Pedersen is an Assistant Professor of Professional Communication in the Faculty of Communication and Design. Her research deals with the rhetoric and semiotics of emergent, reality-shifting media including wearable interfaces, mobile interfaces, and future nanotechnological interfaces. She has given papers on conceptual interface design at several conferences including the National Communication Association Convention, the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on documentation (SIGDOC) conference, the Association of Internet Researchers, the Computers & Writing Conference, and The Humanities Conference. She is currently planning a book dealing with Augmented Reality (AR) and mobile computer devices.

Research Interests

Mobile communication, wearable computers, augmented reality, rhetoric, semiotics, new media

Isabel Pedersen’s research deals with new media and emergent technology. Specifically, it focuses on the rhetoric and semiotics of “reality-shifting” media including wearable computers, mobile devices, locative media, mixed reality/augmented reality, and future nano-technological inventions. It suggests that we need to investigate the rhetorical orders embedded in new interfaces during the process of invention and not simply after the fact. Her humanities-based research falls in the theoretical areas of rhetoric, visual rhetoric, semiotics, metaphor theory, and new media studies.

Selected Publications

Isabel Pedersen. “Augmented Memory, Digital Life, and a Rhetoric of Need” Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies. June 2008, 22:3, pp. 375 - 384.
Isabel Pedersen. “Dehumanization, Rhetoric, and the Design of Wearable Augmented Reality Interfaces” chapter in Small Tech: The Culture of Digital Tools Eds. Byron Hawk, David Rieder, and Ollie Oviedo, University of Minnesota Press, 2008.
Isabel Pedersen. “Getting Out of this World: A Rhetorical Analysis of Technological Millennialism as Motive” International Journal of the Humanities 2007. Vol. 5, Issue 3, pp.9-16.
Isabel Pedersen. “Mobility, Human-centricity, and the Design of Wearable Augmented Reality Interfaces.” International Journal of the Humanities 2006. Vol. 3 No. 1 pp. 143-154.
Isabel Pedersen. “A Semiotics of Human Actions for Wearable Augmented Reality Interfaces” Semiotica Vol. 2005 (155 - 1/4) pp. 183 - 201.


Current Research Project:

She is affiliated with Infoscape Research Lab (http://infoscapelab.ca/) at Ryerson University, which focuses on the cultural impact of digital code.

 

 

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Harold [Innis] taught us how to use the bias of culture and communication as an instrument of research. By directing attention to the bias, or distorting power of the dominant imagery and technology of any culture, he showed us how to understand cultures.
~ Marshall McLuhan