https://www.eleanormarchant.me/news daily 0.75 2014-09-30 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/52a74d9ae4b0253945d2aee9/1400275370693-L0ZTMZY7L6SCYQG6GO85/xzuvhgdQGul0amA3Qc7a_373A9681.jpg News https://www.eleanormarchant.me/new-gallery daily 0.75 2018-12-21 https://www.eleanormarchant.me/home-miller daily 0.75 2025-05-12 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5bac9f5190f9041ab0d554ae/1545404222836-YB6X6Y706KQ6C4IU3VN2/IMG_0005.JPG Home https://www.eleanormarchant.me/new-cover-page daily 1.0 2020-10-09 https://www.eleanormarchant.me/photography-1 daily 0.75 2018-09-28 https://www.eleanormarchant.me/writing daily 0.75 2020-09-26 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5bac9f5190f9041ab0d554ae/1581336456260-UM3KAYOXTNOY9RBIGPLR/_IGP3606-2.jpg Writings - writings ‘Internet Governance in Displacement’ Connectivity for Refugees Research Brief, UNHCR (2020) (with Nicole Stremlau) ‘A Spectrum of Shutdowns: Reframing Internet Shutdowns From Africa,’ International Journal of Communication (2020) (with Nicole Stremlau) ‘The Changing Landscape of Internet Shutdowns in Africa,’ International Journal of Communication (2020) (with Nicole Stremlau) ‘A Collaborative Way of Knowing: Bridging Computational Communication Research and Grounded Theory Ethnography,’ Journal of Communication (2020) (with Dror Walter and Yotam Ophir) ‘Africa’s Internet Shutdowns: A report on the Johannesburg workshop’ (PCMLP, University of Oxford, 2019) (with Nicole Stremlau) ‘World Trends in Freedom of Expression and Media Development: Regional Overview of Africa 2017/2018 (UNESCO & University of Oxford, 2018) 'Anyone Anywhere: Narrating African Innovation in a Global Community of Practice' (University of Pennsylvania Scholarly Commons, 2018) 'Organizational Culture and Hybridity: The hybridization of non-profit and for-profit organizational culture in the Kenyan tech sector' in Bitange Ndemo and Tim Weiss (eds), Digital Kenya: An Entrepreneurial Revolution in the Making (Palgrave Macmillan 2017) Interactive Voice Response and Radio for Peacebuilding: A Macro View of the Literature and Experiences from the Field (Center for Global Communication Studies 2016) A Few Words of Advise and Maybe Comfort from Kenyans to America (aKoma Media, Medium, 10 November 2016) University-based research inspired Google. Is research needed to inspire Kenyan innovators too? (Medium, 29 August, 2016) Who is ICT Innovation for? Challenges to Existing Theories of Innovation, a Kenyan Case Study (Center for Global Communication Studies 2015) ‘The Press Still Free and Independent?’ in Arch Puddington (ed), America: How Free? (Freedom House 2008) (with Karin D Karlekar) https://www.eleanormarchant.me/connect daily 0.75 2020-09-26 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5bac9f5190f9041ab0d554ae/1545326331132-6LDKJ26O5WU9Z4NK6H40/2016-10-17+16.14.27.jpg Connect - connect eleanormarchant [at] protonmail . com https://www.eleanormarchant.me/welcome-1 daily 0.75 2018-12-21 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5bac9f5190f9041ab0d554ae/1545400558961-1SCQEUYC61323VZKSA59/IMG_0005.jpg Welcome https://www.eleanormarchant.me/talks daily 0.75 2020-09-26 https://www.eleanormarchant.me/about-me daily 0.75 2020-09-26 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5bac9f5190f9041ab0d554ae/1545398855420-8VZKZUIDVRH6OZ0UY1EB/12841444_10205309403368743_8474756637939504833_o.jpg About Me - about me I am a researcher with over a decade of experience conducting in-depth qualitative and mixed methods research in the global south as both an academic and practitioner. I am passionate about studying how rapid advances in communication technologies are changing non-western societies, and how their socio-economic contexts in turn shape the technologies created. I thrive in interdisciplinary and applied research environments. My PhD is in communications, my doctoral research method is anthropological, and my Postdoc was in law. With six years spent working in communications and monitoring and evaluation for media and human rights NGOs prior to my PhD, and applied work with humanitarian organizations and technology companies following my PhD, I specialize in turning research insights into actionable practitioner and policymaker recommendations. While I am adept at translating my research skills to diverse environments, I have particularly extensive experience living and conducting research in Kenya, a country that I have been engaged with since my first year spent working with a Kenyan journalists’ right NGO, the Media Institute, back in 2007, and where I conducted 16 months a fieldwork for my doctoral research. I was the ConflictNET Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Oxford University’s Programme in Comparative Media Law & Policy studying efforts to extend internet access into conflict-prone regions in East Africa. I have a PhD from the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, where I was advised by Dr John L. Jackson Jr, the Dean of the Annenberg School. I hold an MA in Political Science from NYU, and a BSc in Politics and Economics from the University of Bristol. Photograph (c) Alex Dyzenhaus 2016 https://www.eleanormarchant.me/research-projects daily 0.75 2020-09-26 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5bac9f5190f9041ab0d554ae/1545326559362-8GG2NX6DE4BMNRVNMC56/IMG_0040.jpg Past Research - ConflictNET: Internet and conflict I designed and conducted research into the discourses, practices, and impact of efforts to extend internet access to the most remote regions in East Africa, as well as policies (like government-ordered internet shutdown) that restrict or censor the internet. I am particularly interested how the polices and practices that shape internet access and its use by vulnerable populations, like refugees and IDPs, are made and implemented. This research was part of the ConflictNET project, a multi-year ERC grant-funded study run by Dr Nicole Stremlau to examine the implications of increasing access to the internet in delicate conflict-prone contexts. As part of this study, we held a workshop on internet shutdowns in Africa in Johannesburg in May 2018 with participants from across the continent, and published the results of this conference in a special section of the International Journal of Communication in 2020. To learn more about the ConflictNET project, please visit the website of the Programme in Comparative Media Law & Policy. https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/5bac9f5190f9041ab0d554ae/1545326653767-GJV84OVJMVJLV5UYXYT6/Skyline-2.jpg Past Research - Technology innovation in Kenya For my doctoral work, I conducted a multi-year ethnography of the lived experiences of those at the forefront of shaping the modern technological landscape in East Africa. After two years of preliminary research, I spent 12 months as an embedded anthropologist in the communications department of one of the most well-known technology hubs in Africa, Nairobi’s iHub. Operating since 2010, the iHub has acted as a gateway for many international investors and entrepreneurs interested in engaging with Kenyan techies, and built up its reputation for this through the ability of its members to construct a globally persuasive narrative about Kenya as the “tech hub of Africa”, and the iHub as the gateway to that hub. Drawing from the deep data I collected over the previous three years, I argue in the dissertation that while actors like the iHub were working to shape such narratives, those same narratives, as well as other powerful technological and cultural narratives (like Africa Rising or techno-optimism) also acted to shape, and at times, inhibit, the work that the iHub and other members of Kenya technology community could do.