Dr Robert Hassan
ARC Senior Research Fellow, Media and Communications
Biography
Since coming to Australia from the UK in the 1980s I worked as a welder in shipyards in Sydney. This led, somewhat naturally for the time, to an interest in politics which led in turn to formalizing this interest by going to university. I completed a BA (Hons) at Swinburne University of Technology and went on to complete a PhD in Cultural Studies at the same institution and completed it in 2000. I worked as a sessional lecturer at RMIT in 2001 and then returned to Swinburne to begin a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at the Institute for Social Research. At the end of this time I took up a three-year ARC Postdoctoral Fellowship that was completed in April of 2006.
Research
In 2006 I commenced a five-year ARC Discovery Fellowship titled 'Speed, Time and the Political Process in Australia'. The précis reads: 'The interrelated processes of globalisation and the revolution in information and communications technologies are creating an increasingly networked and high-speed society whose effects have left many areas unexplored and under-analysed. Amongst these are the effects of digital networks and speed upon political processes and institutions within the Australian polity. The project will comprise a five-year theoretical and political-ethnographic study into how formal political processes such as background research, reflective analysis, debate, canvassing of expert opinion, and the awareness of future consequences of political decision-making are affected by the global pressures of the network society and the acceleration of everyday life.'
Research interests
The ARC project follows from my interests in developing a social theory of time. Specifically it looks at the social, economic and political effects of the information technology revolution. In my work a theory of time (the human relationship with time) is central. By foregrounding time, by making the temporal dimensions of everyday life more explicit, my research seeks to open up new perspectives on salient issues in the social sciences. And so for example through such an approach the genesis an immanent nature of economic globalisation, of the information technology revolution and the new media forms that it has developed take on new meanings and suggest new modes of inquiry and interpretation. My most recently completed work is a book Empire of Speed which is a general theoretical treatment of the social, political and economic nature of speed. Currently I am working on a book called The Political Economy of the Information Society andcommenced the editorship of the journal Time & Society in September 2006.Publications
Books
- 24/7: Critical Essays on Time in the Network Society (Edited with Ron Purser) Stanford: Stanford University Press 2006.
- The New Media Theory Reader (Edited with Julian Thomas) Maidenhead: Open University Press 2006.
- Media and Politics in the Network Society Maidenhead: Open University Press 2004.
- The Chronoscopic Society: Globalization, Time and Knowledge in the Networked Economy New York: Lang 2003.
Book chapters
- 'Network Time' 24/7: Critical Essays on Time in the Network Society Stanford: Stanford University Press 2006.
Articles
- 'Liquid Time and Space' Southern Review Volume 38 Number 2, 2005.
- 'Timescapes of the Network Society' Fast Capitalism Volume 1 Number 1, 2005.
- 'The MIT Media Lab: Techno-Dream factory or Alienation as a Way of Life?' Media, Culture and Society Volume 25 Number 1, 2003.
- 'Network Time and the New Knowledge Epoch' Time & Society Volume 12 Number 2/3, 2003.
- 'Embrace Your Fate' Continuum Volume 17 Number 1, 2003.
- 'Time and Knowledge in the Information Ecology' Southern Review Volume 35 Number 2, 2002.
- 'What If…Information Technology Were to Hinder Learning and Undermine Democracy?' Information Technology, Education and Society Volume 2 Number 1, 2001.
- 'Net Results: Knowledge, Information and Learning on the Internet' Journal of Educational Enquiry Volume 2 Number 2, 2001.
- 'Globalisation: Information Technology and Culture with the Space Economy of Late Capitalism' Information, Communication and Society Volume 2 Number 3, 2001.
- 'The Space Economy of Convergence' Convergence Volume 6 Number 4 (Winter), 2000.
Other publications
- 'Digital Multitude' Filter March-June, 2006.
- 'Res Artis: New Media Neoliberalised' RealTime Magazine 59 July, 2004.
- 'Art Versus Empire' RealTime Magazine Number 61 October, 2004.
Conference papers
- 'No Future' Futures Conference, Cardiff University, UK 4-6th September, 2006
- 'The Speed of Liberal Democracy' 5th Palermo International Conference on Social Time, Terassini, Sicily June 21-23, 2006
- 'Digital Speed and Democratic Politics' The Dromocratic Condition Conference on Speed, Time and Society, University of Newcastle, March 12-14, 2005.
- 'No Time for Politics' Time and Organizational Management Conference, INSEAD Business School, Fontainebleau, France June 28-30, 2004. Organized by the International Network for Time in Management and Organizations (INTiMO).
- 'Time and Reflexivity' Time and Organizational Management Conference, Essex, Massachusetts, USA July 1-4, 2003 Organized by the International Network for Time in Management and Organizations (INTiMO).
- 'Potential Time and Power Time in the Network Society' Conference on the 'Quest for Certainty in the Context of Risk and Indeterminacy' Cardiff University School of Social Science, 9th October, 2003.