Dr. Kim Sawchuk, PhD

Dr. Kim Sawchuk is a Professor in the Department of Communication Studies, holds the Concordia University Research Chair in Mobile Media Studies, and is the Associate Dean of Research and Graduate Studies for the Faculty of Arts and Science at Concordia University.

Since the mid-1990s, much of Kim Sawchuk’s intellectual attention has focused on the intersection between age, ageing, and communication technologies (see: actproject.ca). Her research on ageing in networked societies is intersectional and challenges lingering ageist assumptions within media studies, where old age and new media are often positioned as incommensurable topics. This research is dedicated to fostering opportunities for intergenerational media-making and is foundational to a re-theorization of how we understand key concepts in the field of communications, such as mediation and mediatization. Dr. Sawchuk’s research asks what it means to age in a society where the pressure to become digital is being made into an imperative for participation in public life. She has conducted major ethnographic investigations on “seniors and cell phones” with Dr. Barbara Crow of York University. These studies have demonstrated the need for researchers to understand the connections between ageing, personal household economies, political economic forces and the policies that influence cell phone use; they also question how we understand “non-use”.  Kim’s most recent work on ageing and media is centred on community-based media practices with older adults and is asking questions about the ways in which Web 3.0 is shaping public knowledge of age and ageing.  

Kim is also a co-founder of the Critical Disability Studies Working Group (CDSWG) at Concordia, which is part of the cluster Communities and Differential Mobilities, within the newly reforming Hexagram. Her research in this area explores the use of research-creation and media-making with the Montreal disability rights community. 

Current Research Collaborations: 

Dr. Sawchuk is the director of Ageing, Communication, Technologies: Experiencing a Digital World In Later Life (ACT), a seven-year research project funded under the auspices of a 2.9 million dollar SSHRC Partnership Grant. ACT is an international, interdisciplinary, and multi-methodological research project that investigates the transformation of experiences of ageing with the proliferation of new forms of mediated communications in networked societies. ACT is a project housed at Concordia University, comprising various partners: Canadian and international universities, research groups (e.g., ENAS, NANAS, and  WAM), and local community partners (e.g., RECAA, Atwater Library, Groupe Harmonie).  

Dr. Sawchuk is the co-director of Wi: Journal of Mobile Media and a co-founder of the Mobile Media Lab (York-Concordia), located in Concordia’s Department of Communication Studies. She completed a six-year term as the editor of the Canadian Journal of Communication and is the co-founder of Studio XX, a feminist research and media arts centre located Montréal. 

Education

Projects and Collaborations

ACTipedia

AddressKnown

Audio-Mobile

Differential Mobilities

Echoscape

Montreal In/accessible (MIA)

Memoryspace

Performigrations: Mobile Interventions YUL

RECAA: In Their Own Words

Virtual Daylighting and Lost Rivers

What Is Mobilities (WIM)

Book Chapters (2014 -2016)

Articles (2015-2016)

Forthcoming

Articles (non-refereed)

PhD Supervision

Joint PhD Programme:
Concordia University, University of Quebec at Montreal, University of Montreal
PhD in Humanities, Concordia University.

Completed
Andrea Zeffiro, The Location of Practice, January, 2011. Post doc, SFU-Surry with Diane Gromala.

Jennifer Willet, (Re) Embodying Biotechnology, Sept. 2009. Research-creation project in the Humanities. Tenure track position, University of Windsor.

Caroline Caron, Vues, mais non entendues. Les adolescentes québécoises francophones et
l’hypersexualisation de la mode et des medias, Aug, 2009. Post-doc, University of Ottawa.

Judith Nicholson, Killing Time; The Cellular Telephone from Dick Tracey to Abu Ghraib, June, 2008.

Tenure-track position WLU; Concordia Doctoral Thesis Prize.

Kenneth Werbin: The list serves: apparatuses of security and governmentality, April 11, 2008. Post-doc, Ryerson University’s Infolab; tenure-track position, Wilfrid Laurier.

Linnet Fawcett, Writing the Skating Body: Movement, Affect Space, Dec. 15, 2006. Post-doc, Centre for Research Ethics, University of Montreal.

Robyn Diner, Unruly Bodies and the Politics of Irony, Sept. 10, 2004.
Clive Robertson, Movement Apparatus: Artist-Run Centres in Canada, Sept. 10, 2004 (co-supervised with Martin Allor) Tenure-track position at Queens University.

Sandra Gabriele, Gendering the Woman Journalist: Toronto 1890-1900, April 2, 2004. Tenure-track position at the University of Windsor.

Thomas Haig, The Conversant Community, fall 2001. Full time employment at Ser-Zero, Montreal as research and community outreach coordinator.

Maria Nengeh Mensah, L’anatomie du l’invisible: le corps femme et le sida, spring, 2001. Tenure track position, UQAM. Dr. Mensah now holds a Quebec government Research Chair at UQAM.

Sheryl Hamilton, Thinking Machines: a history of the representation of new technologies, fall, 2000. Post-doc, University of Toronto.Tenure track position at Carelton. Dr. Hamilton holds a CRC in Communications and Law.

Josephine Mills, Public Occupations: Theorizing Art and ‘the Public,’ August, 1999. Tenure track position at the University of Lethbridge.

Julianne Pidduck, Intimate Spaces and Flights of Fancy: Gendered Movement in Contemporary Costume Drama, November, 1997. Post-doc, Warwick University. Tenure track position at the University of Montreal.

Masters Supervision (completed)

Jessica Antony, Negotiated Rebelion: Tattooed Women (September, 2008)

Amy McKinnon, Girl Power, (October, 2007).

Robyn Fadden, Endoscopes, Microscopes and the Visual Culture of Communication, (October, 2007)

Heather Peters, Sex workers in Thailand (Sept, 2007).

Mélanie Hogan, Queering the Archive, (August, 2007).

Rachel Matlow, Love, Angel, Appropriation, Baby: Gwen Stefani as Intertextual celebrity, (April 2007).

Lesley Husbands, Miracles and Monsters: Representations of Motherhood (April 2007)

Jeny Nussey, Tensions and Contradictions: The Dr. Phil Show, (January, 2005)

Nikki Porter, In Search of the Slayer: Audience negotiation of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, (April 2004)

Susan Goodyear, Schizophrenia as metaphor: madness and the cinematic asylum, (April, 2004)

Jennifer Anisef, The politics of craft, (March 2004).

Anna Friz, Pirate Jenny, (April, 2003)

Linda Kay, Representing the Real, (April, 2001).

Chantal Francouer, Journalism and Ethnography, (May, 2001)

Sandra Dametto, The State of the Union: an on-line documentary, (April, 2001)

Katherine Liberovskaya, Media Art, (Fall, 2000)

Sheryl Shore, Touching Bone, (September, 1999)

Linnet Fawcett, The Epistolary Pact: Letters to Ms. (August, 1999)

Jacob Bakan, “Communication and Self Expression” (August, 1998)

Katarina Soukup, “Radio Bicyclette: Rozlach 68″ (September, 1998)

Luba Krekhovetsky, “Ukrainians on the Internet” (September, 1998)

Jennifer de Freitas, “Heritage Tourism as Secular Pilgrimmage,” (May 1998)

Dipti Gupta, Working and Networking: Indian Women Make Documentary Films (October, 1997)

Lisa Monk, “(April, 1997)

Susan Schutta, Stop the Presses: Aboriginal Newspapers in Canada, (February, 1997)

Iain Cook, “The Jazz of the Web,” (April 1996)

Justine Akman, Considering the Context: Women in the Association of Progressive Communications. (Sept. 1995)

Maureen Bradley,Reframing the Montreal Massacre: A feminist interrogation, (May, 1995)

Gordon Thompson, The Ontology of Technology (September, 1993)

Rhona Davies, Talk, Television and Tannen (May, 1993)

MFA Supervision (completed)

Frances Leeming, Open Media, 2001

Jen Southern, “Crash,” March , 1996 (MFA, Open Media)

Louise Wilson, “Abulia,” March 1996 (MFA, Open Media)