Dr Daniel Chandler
Daniel Chandler
is a lecturer in Media Theory in the
Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies at the
University of Wales, Aberystwyth.
His current research interests are in
children's understanding of television and in the
phenomenology of the act of writing. He teaches
undergraduate courses on
Media Theory,
Learning from TV and
Media Education. He is the coordinator of an
interdepartmental
MA course in Television Studies, and supervises
research students in the field of media theory.
He also runs a website called
the Media and Communication Studies Page, which is a
gateway to academic resources on the World-Wide Web for the
study of media and communication.
His own most heavily-accessed on-line
paper is
'Semiotics for Beginners', the book version of which is due out from Routledge on 7th December 2001.
Professor Michael Cole
Mike Cole is Professor of Psychology at the University of California, San Diego.
He is the founding Director of the Laboratory of Comparative Human
Cognition. As a group, this Laboratory has collaboratively authored a number
of classic reviews in standard handbooks and reference works. His collaborative
study with Sylvia Scribner, The Psychology of Literacy (1981), helped establish
the view that human cognition can only be grasped and understood within the
context of the cultural practices that sustain and constitute it. He has played
a major role in introducing Russian schools of psychology to the West. He is currently pursuing the issue of the cultural constitution of
human development by creating experimental activity systems which are
studied over time both with respect to the develoment of children in
them and to their growth within their institutional contexts.
Professor Jeanne Curran
Jeanne Curran is Professor
of Sociology at California State University, Dominguez Hills. Her work
focuses on teaching, without arrogance, without hierarchy, in a formal
university setting that invites all to discourse on the major issues of
justice, equality, legitimacy, and human understanding. This work is best
illustrated by the Web site, 'Dear Habermas'.
The 'Dear Habermas' site represents the
latest stage, in work and publications shared with
Professor Susan R.
Takata of the University of Wisconsin, Parkside,
in bringing students into an
interactive exchange with faculty in the creation of texts for intertextual
readings. Jeanne funded (FIPSE, HEW) her first undergraduate teaching
project with Executive Director Hans Mauksch of the American Sociological
Association, in 1975. Along with Susan Takata, Jeanne went on to establish
the Stanley Mosk
Undergraduate Moot Court Competition, and to develop interactive
teaching patterns that would promote life-time learning and participation.
Susan Takata was a student in that 1975 FIPSE project, as
were Dr. Lois Lee, founder of Children of the Night, and Dr. J. J. Ponath, a
psychologist who works with women in prison.
Professor Bronwyn Davies
Bronwyn Davies is Professor of Education at James Cook University,
Townsville, Queensland. She is best known for her work on children's
developing understanding of stories and the way these contribute to the
development of their identity (for example, her books Frogs and Snails and
Feminist Tales: Preschool Children and Gender, 1989; and Shards of Glass:
Children Reading and Writing Beyond Gendered Identities, 1993).
David Epston
David Epston is a co-director of the Family Therapy Centre in Auckland. Along
with Michael White he is a co-originator of a method of psychotherapeutic
practice that has come to be termed 'narrative therapy' (for example, their joint
book Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends, 1990). He has a world-wide
reputation as being one of the most creative and effective psychotherapists
currently practising. He currently holds an Adjunct Professorship at John F.
Kennedy University, San Francisco, and is a member of the visiting Faculty of
the Department of Psychiatry and Epidemiology, Albert Einstein School of
Medicine, New York. He regularly holds invited workshops and training
seminars in Australia, North America and Europe. He will contribute to the
core programme being proposed as well as to the planning of a possible future
'therapeutic' branch.
David Gauntlett is Lecturer in Social Communications in the Institute of Communication Studies at the University of Leeds. Among his books are Moving
Experiences: Understanding Television's Influences and Effects (1995); Video
Critical: Children, the Environment, and Media Power (1997); (with Annette Hill) TV
Living: Television, Culture and Everyday Life (1999)
; and he is the editor of WEB.STUDIES: Rewiring Media Studies for the Digital Age (2000). His next book, Media,
Gender and Identity: A New Introduction is about to be published. David is responsible for the resources available at the media theory site
Ken Gergen is Professor of Psychology at Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania.
He has been a major influence in social psychology since his and P. Davies's
1967 book on The Self. His role since then has been as an increasingly
penetrating and respected critic of psychological practice, his 12 books including the 1991 award-winning The Saturated Self. Among his more recent
books are Therapy as Social Construction (co-edited with S. McNamee), 1992; Realities and Relationships: Soundings in Social Construction, 1994; the 2nd Edition of Toward Transformation in Social Knowledge; and An Invitation to Social Construction
Professor Mary Gergen
Mary Gergen is Associate Professor of Psychology at Pennsylvania State
University. She has been influential in a number of areas relating to this
proposal, both on the theoretical level and as an innovative empirical
researcher. Her recent work has contributed directly to the understanding of
narrative and its place in social psychological explanations; feminist approaches
in psychology (eg, her 1988 book, Feminist Thought and the Structure of
Knowledge); and organizational theory. She thus brings together in her work
a number of strands that contribute to issues addressed in this proposed
programme.
Professor Rom Harre
Rom Harre is a New Zealander by birth. He is the Chair of the Sub-
department of Philosophy at the University of Oxford and concurrently
Professor of Social Psychology at Georgetown University, Washington D.C.. He
has published over 30 books in the past 30 years, both in the Philosophy of
Science and the foundations of Social Psychology. His 1972 book, co-authored
with P.F.Secord, The Explanation of Social Behaviour became a `Citation
Classic', and is the foundation source of modern social psychology. Rom was
a student of the founder of Speech Act philosophy, J.L.Austin (a pupil of
Wittgenstein), a philosophy which is at the root of both Cognitive Science and
current interests in language and discourse as they illuminate the `human
condition'. Among his most recent books are The Discursive Mind (with G. Gillett), 1992; Discursive Psychology in Practice (with P. Stearns), 1995; Rethinking Psychology, 1995, and Rethinking Methods in Psychology, 1995 (both with J. A. Smith and L. van Langenhove).
Professor Vincent Hevern
Vinnie Hevern is Chair of the Department of Psychology at LeMoyne College, Syracuse, NY. He has compiled the largest available set of Web resources on Narrative Psychology in support of the course he teaches on that subject. His pages focus upon narrative perspectives in psychology and allied disciplines and provide an interdisciplinary guide to bibliographical and Internet resources concerned with "the storied nature of human conduct" (Sarbin, 1986) broadly conceived.
Professor Andrew Lock
Andy Lock is Professor of Psychology at Massey University, Palmerston North,
New Zealand. He was the editor of a collection of papers on the transition
from prelinguistic communication to first words Action, Gesture and Symbol:
The Emergence of Language in 1978, and a subsequent monograph, The Guided
Reinvention of Language (1980). Both of these volumes approach early
language development from a Vygotskyean perspective. His interest in the
emergence of symbol systems has sustained a collaboration with Charles Peters
at the University of Georgia for the past decade, during which time they have
jointly edited the Handbook of Human Symbolic Evolution (1996). He is
presently trying to co-ordinate these developmental and evolutionary
perspectives to extend earlier work done in association with Paul Heelas
(Indigenous Psychologies: The Anthropology of the Self, 1981).
Ian Parker is Professor of Psychology at Bolton Institute. He is
co-director of the Tri-Institutional Discourse Unit (with bases at
Bolton Institute, Bradford University and The Manchester Metropolitan
University). He has been involved (as author, co-author, editor or
co-editor) in 10 books dealing with critical perspectives in
psychology. His work on the theory and practice of discourse analysis
is concerned with the way psychology can be located in systems of
power and ideology (for example, in Discourse Dynamics: Critical
power and ideology (for example, in Analysis for Social and Individual Psychology, 1992, and Culture,
Power and Difference: Discourse Analysis in South Africa, 1997,
co-edited with Ann Levett, Amanda Kottler and Erica Burman), and with
psychoanalytically- structured forms of subjectivity in contemporary
culture (in Psychoanalytic Culture: Psychoanalytic Discourse in
Western Society, 1997). Critical frameworks used in his work range
from post-structuralist approaches (for example, in Deconstructing
Psychopathology, 1995, with David Harper, Eugenie Georgaca, Terence
McLaughlin and Mark Stowell-Smith) to Marxism (for example, in
Psychology and Society: Radical Theory and Practice, 1996, co-edited
with Russell Spears). He is also a member of Psychology Politics
Resistance and active in the North West Right to Refuse Electroshock
Campaign.
Joseph Petraglia is an Assistant
Professor of Rhetoric and Cognitive Science in the Georgia
Institute of Technology's School of Literature, Communication
and Culture (LCC). His primary teaching focus is on
introductory courses in rhetorical theory, rhetoric and textual
practices in science and technology, and cognitive approaches
to educational technology. Primary research interests include
the rhetoric of inquiry, comparative methodology,
socio-cognitive approaches to learning, international
education, and the rhetoric of educational technology.
Current collaborative research projects include the
Rhetoric
Resources at Tech (RRT), a web-based resource for
introductory rhetoric courses, and
Reality Check,
a software
project designed to facilitate constructivist learning.
He has recently edited Reconceiving Writing,
Rethinking Writing Instruction (Lawrence Erlbaum, 1995) and his book Reality
by Design: The Rhetoric and Technology of Authenticity in
Education is forthcoming (also from Lawrence
Erlbaum). He has published several articles on cognitivism and
writing pedagogy, theories of social construction, and
authenticity as an educational and technological objective.
Jonathan Potter is Professor of Discourse Analysis in the Department of Social
Sciences at the University of Loughborough. He is the co-author of 6 books and
monographs (see, for example, Discourse and Social Psychology, 1987, Discursive Psychology, 1992, and Representing Reality, 1996), and over 40 papers in the past 10 years that have provided a focus
in social psychology for the study of discourse processes, and a legitimation of
this focus as a 'proper subject for a discipline that historically has emphasized
observation and operationalism' (Contemporary Psycholgy). He is a co-
collaborator with Billig (above), Derek Edwards and Margaret Wetherell in a
number of projects that have brought the Loughborough group to world
prominence.
Lois Shawver
Lois Shawver, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist and
psychoanalyst. She publishes on a broad range of topics and is on the
editorial board of the American Journal of
Psychoanalysis. She has also served as an expert
witness in a large number of United States and
Canadian trials on a variety of issues related to human sexuality. Her
testimony has been used by both state and national governmental agencies as
well as by
plaintiffs suing these agencies. Her most recent paper, 'Psychoanalysis and Postmodernism', was published in the American Journal of Psychoanalysis. Her most recent book is And the Flag Was
Still There: Straight People, Gay People and Sexuality in the U.S. Military. She has been teaching a seminar on Wittgenstein on the internet since 1996 on the MFTC List, where she is an active voice, and is considering teaching one on Foucault. She is developing resources on the web in relation to all these activities. Another of her projects is co-ordinating an on-line collaborative text on the history of psychology from a postmodern perspective.
John Shotter is Professor and Chair of the Department of Communication at
the University of New Hampshire; he was previously Professor of Social
Psychology at the University of Utrecht. He is currently joint editor of the Sage
series 'Inquiries in Social Constructionism' with Kenneth Gergen (above). He
is one of the founders of the social construction paradigm in social psychology,
through a series of 5 books dating back to 1976 (one co-authored with Alan
Gauld (Human Action and its Psychological Investigation, 1977) (see, for example, Conversational Realities: Constructing Life through Language, 1993). In addition to his work in social psychology, John is also
recognised as a major interpreter of the philosophy of Wittgenstein.
Professor James Wertsch
Jim Wertsch is Chair of the Department of Education, Washington University, St. Louis, USA. He
is one of the foremost interpreters to the West of the Russian school of
Psychology comprising Vygotsky, Bahktin, Le'ontiev, Luria and Voloshinov.
This school of thought has been a major factor in the last 15 years in the
reformulation of western Psychology to provide the bases of the emerging
`Second Cognitive Revolution'. His books include: Vygotsky
and the Social Formation of Mind (1985), an exposition of Vygotsky's thought; Culture, communication, and cognition: Vygotskian perspectives
(1985), a 'standard' exploration of the application of Vygotskyean theorising to empirical issues in child development; and 
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