David Gauntlett (WP5 Leader)

Biography

David Gauntlett is Professor of Media and Communications, and Co-Director of the Communication and Media Research Institute (CAMRI), University of Westminster.

He is the author of several books on media and identities, and the everyday creative use of digital media. These include Moving Experiences (1995, second edition 2005), Video Critical (1997), TV Living (with Annette Hill, 1999), Media, Gender and Identity (2002, second edition 2008), and Creative Explorations: New approaches to identities and audiences (2007), which was shortlisted for Young Academic Author of the Year in the 2007 Times Higher Awards. He also edited two editions of the book Web Studies (2000, 2004).

More recently he has written Making is Connecting: The social meaning of creativity, from DIY and knitting to YouTube and Web 2.0 (2011),  Media Studies 2.0, and Other Battles around the Future of Media Research (2011), and Making Media Studies: The Creativity Turn in Media and Communications Studies (2015).

Since his appointment at Westminster in 2006, he has been awarded – as Principal Investigator – five research awards from the AHRC, and one from the EPSRC, totalling £700,000. He is also a Co-Investigator or Partner in other awards (AHRC and EU Horizon 2020) worth £1.9 million.

He has made several popular online resources, videos and playthings, and has pioneered creative research and hands-on workshop methods. He is the external examiner for Information Experience Design at the Royal College of Art, London.

He has conducted collaborative research with a number of the world’s leading creative organisations, including the BBC, the British Library, and Tate. For a decade he has worked with LEGO on innovation in creativity, play and learning, and has led the writing of a number of reports for the LEGO Foundation, including The Future of Play (2011), The Future of Learning(2012), and Cultures of Creativity (2013).

Gauntlett’s work has been discussed in every one of the UK’s national newspapers, from The Observer to The Sun; internationally in the New York TimesSüddeutsche ZeitungThe Australian; on BBC News, and elsewhere.

Contact and further information

 
Further information about David Gauntlett can be found at his website, which includes a contact form.

Role in the DiDIY Project

 
Gauntlett leads Work Package 5 WP5, 'Exploring the impact of DiDIY on creative society', and also contributes to the research and other activities of the other Work Packages and Transversal Tasks.

Impact: