Adam Dowdle
PhD studentResearch Overview
My research interests include exploring how people imagine and engage with the future through ethnofuturism, visual culture (images of the future in film) and participatory methods such as futures literacy. I have an interest in non-western, non-white culturally situated futures have been overlooked, in favour of dominant anglophone interpretations of futures. I foreground perspectives such as Afro and Indigenous futurism as points of analysis for investigating how alternative futures are imagined, represented, and experienced across different communities and cultural contexts.
Current Research
My current PhD research is titled - Methods of imagining: Ethnofuturism, Visual Elicitation and the Cultural Mediation of Futures
This thesis examines how futures are imagined beyond such perspectives, arguing that understandings of the future are culturally mediated. Drawing on a combination of ethnofuturistic film analysis, visual representations of alternative futures, interviews, and a creative persona-led task, the research investigates how non-Anglo-American futures are imagined, constructed, navigated, and interpreted.
Career Details
As an associate lecturer I have taught on the following modules:
SOCL 101: The Sociological Imagination
MCS 101: Transformations: From Mass Media to Social Media