The Urban Media and Digital Geographies (UM&DG) research group investigates the critical role played by space, place, and location within digital media and society.
UM&DG brings together a collaborative and cross-disciplinary group of researchers working across (i) digital geographies; (ii) urban informatics, smart cities, digital twins, and platform urbanism; and (iii) technological sovereignty and critical data studies.
Foregrounding location and the smart city as key sites where debates over privacy, surveillance capitalism, trust, and data governance, regulation, and sovereignty play out, the group works closely with industry and government, deploying a critical data studies lens and privacy by design approach to promote equitable data futures and build trust in digital systems.
Group Members
Affiliated members
- Dr Monique Mann, Deakin University
- Dr Sarah Barns, RMIT University
HDRs
Projects
Funded research projects connected to this research group include
- Digital media, location awareness, and the politics of geodata (DP180100174) (2018–2022). ARC Discovery Project.
- RAISE: Rapid analytics interactive scenario explorer toolkit (2016–2019). CRC for Spatial Information (CRCSI)/Frontier SI Rapid Spatial Analytics project.
Publications
Recent and forthcoming publications by this research group include
- Heitlinger, Sara, Foth, Marcus, & Clarke, Rachel (Eds.) (2024) Designing More-than-Human Smart Cities: Beyond Sustainability, Towards Cohabitation. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK. (In Press).
- Mitchell, Peta. (2024). Digital space. In E. F. Evans (Ed.) Space and literary studies. Cambridge University Press. (In Press).
- Megarry, Jessica, Mitchell, Peta, Rittenbruch, Markus, Kao, Yu, Christensen, Bryce, & Foth, Marcus (2023) Probing for privacy: A digital design method to support reflection on situated geoprivacy and trust. Digital Society.
- Mitchell, Peta, Foth, Marcus, & Rittenbruch, Markus. (2023) Digital geographies and the location economy: Towards a transdisciplinary research agenda. In T. Osborne & P. Jones (Eds.) A research agenda for digital geographies. Edward Elgar.
- Sheikh, Hira, Foth, Marcus, & Mitchell, Peta (2023) Reparative futures of smart urban governance: A speculative design approach for multispecies justice. Futures, Article number: 103266.
- Sheikh, Hira, Foth, Marcus, & Mitchell, Peta (2023) From Legislation to Obligation: Re-thinking Smart Urban Governance for Multispecies Justice. Urban Governance.
- Sheikh, Hira, Foth, Marcus, & Mitchell, Peta (2023) More-than-human city-region foresight: multispecies entanglements in regional governance and planning. Regional Studies, 57(4), pp. 642-655.
- Sheikh, Hira, Mitchell, Peta, & Foth, Marcus (2023) More-than-human smart urban governance: A research agenda. Digital Geography and Society, 4, Article number: 100045.
- Sheikh, Hira, Foth, Marcus, & Mitchell, Peta (2023) (Re)imagining the ibis: Multispecies future(s), smart urban governance, and the digital environmental humanities. In Travis, Charles, Dixon, Deborah P., Bergmann, Luke, Legg, Robert, & Crampsie, Arlene (Eds.) Routledge Handbook of the Digital Environmental Humanities. Routledge, Abingdon, Oxon, pp. 490-515.
- Sheikh, Hira, Deary, Isabella, Davies, Lowana, Davies, Merinda, Foth, Marcus, & Mitchell, Peta (2023) Creative futuring for more-than-human worlds: Exhibitions as sites to ponder environmental governance. Leonardo.
- Foth, Marcus, Emamjome, Fahame, Mitchell, Peta, & Rittenbruch, Markus (2022) Spatial data in urban informatics: Contentions of the software-sorted city. In Carta, Silvio (Ed.) Machine Learning and the City: Applications in Architecture and Urban Design. Wiley-Blackwell.
- Mann, Monique, Mitchell, Peta, & Foth, Marcus (2022) Between surveillance and technological solutionism: A critique of privacy-preserving apps for COVID-19 contact-tracing. New Media & Society.
- Megarry, Jessica, Kao, Yu, Mitchell, Peta, & Rittenbruch, Markus (2022) Probing for privacy: A digital cultural probe to support reflection on situated geoprivacy and trust. In Proceedings of the 2022 GoodBrother International Conference on Privacy-friendly and Trustworthy Technology for Society. GoodBrother COST Action 19121, Belgium, pp. 40-45.
- Mitchell, Peta, Megarry, Jessica, & Nelson, Lucinda (2022) Location data as sensitive information. QUT Digital Media Research Centre submission in response to the Privacy Act Review Discussion Paper.
- Mitchell, Peta, Foth, Marcus, & Anastasiu, Irina (2022) Geographies of locative apps. In Adams, Paul C. & Warf, Barney (Eds.) Routledge Handbook of Media Geographies. Routledge, Abingdon, Oxon, pp. 183-195.
- Mitchell, Peta (2022) Geo-locations. In Frow, John (Ed.) The Oxford Encyclopedia of Literary Theory. Oxford University Press.
- Monge, Fernando, Barns, Sarah, Kattel, Rainer, & Bria, Francesca (2022) A new data deal: the case of Barcelona. UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose.
- Sheikh, Hira, Foth, Marcus, & Mitchell, Peta (2022) More-than-human city-region foresight: multispecies entanglements in regional governance and planning. Regional Studies.
- Bottero, Marta, Caprioli, Caterina, Foth, Marcus, Mitchell, Peta, Rittenbruch, Marcus, Santangelo, Marco (2022) Urban parks, value uplift and green gentrification: an application of the Spatial Hedonic Model in the city of Brisbane. Urban Forestry and Urban Greening.
- Barns, Sarah. (2021) Out of the loop? On the radical and the routine in urban big data. Urban Studies, 58(15), pp. 3203–3210.
- Foth, Marcus, Mitchell, Peta, Mann, Monique, Rittenbruch, Markus, & Anastasiu, Irina (2021) Some environmental sustainability concerns about IoT-enabled smart cities. Input paper for the Horizon Scanning Project ‘The Internet of Things’ on behalf of the Australian Council of Learned Academies (ACoLA). Australian Council of Learned Academies (ACOLA), Australia.
- Foth, Marcus, Anastasiu, Irina, Mann, Monique, & Mitchell, Peta (2021) From automation to autonomy: Technological sovereignty for better data care in smart cities. In Wang, Brydon Timothy & Wang, Chien Ming (Eds.) Automating Cities: Design, Construction, Operation and Future Impact. Springer, Singapore, 319–343.
- Rittenbruch, Markus, Foth, Marcus, Mitchell, Peta, Chitrakar, Rajjan, Christensen, Bryce, & Pettit, Christopher (2021) Co-designing planning support systems in urban science: The questions they answer and the questions they raise. Journal of Urban Technology.
- Foth, Marcus, Mitchell, Peta, & Estrada Grajales, Carlos Andres (2020) Today’s Internet for tomorrow’s cities: On algorithmic culture and urban imaginaries. In Hunsinger, J, Allen, M M, & Klastrup, L (Eds.) Second International Handbook of Internet Research. Springer, The Netherlands, pp. 725-746.
- Mann, Monique, Mitchell, Peta, Foth, Marcus, & Anastasiu Cioaca, Irina (2020) #BlockSidewalk to Barcelona: Technological sovereignty and the social license to operate smart cities. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 71(9), pp. 1103-1115.
- Pettit, Chris, Shi, Y., Han, Hoon, Rittenbruch, Markus, Foth, Marcus, Lieske, Scott, Van De Nouwelant, Ryan, Mitchell, Peta, et al. (2020) A new toolkit for land value analysis and scenario planning. Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science, 47(8), pp. 1490-1507.
Presentations + Symposia
Recent and upcoming presentations by this research group include
- Barns, Sarah, and Mitchell, Peta (2023) Storytelling, smart cities, and sustainability: Fostering public engagement in urban sustainability through situated digital storytelling. Geosus 2023. International Workshop on Geography and Sustainability.
- Foth, Marcus (2023) More-than-Human Futures: Connected Urbanism and Cohabitation in the Smart City. Geosus 2023. International Workshop on Geography and Sustainability.
- Mitchell, Peta, Highfield, Tim, Leszczynski, Agnieszka, Shaw, Bonnie, Wilken, Rowan (2022, 14 November) Situating the location economy. Where It’s At – Locating Data Futures in the Digital Economy Symposium. View recording.
- Rittenbruch, Markus, Kao, Yu, Megarry, Jessica, O’Donnell, Nicholas, Smythe, Nic (2022, 14 November) Designing for location privacy. Where It’s At – Locating Data Futures in the Digital Economy Symposium. View recording.
- Foth, Marcus, Jacoby, Steven, Mann, Monique, Perez, Pascal, Pink, Sarah (2022, 14 November) Smart cities, digital twins and the social licence to operate. Where It’s At – Locating Data Futures in the Digital Economy Symposium. View recording.
- Mann, Monique, Booth, Paxton, Goldenfein, Jake, Manwaring, Kayleen, Murray, Angus (2022, 14 November) Regulating the location economy. Where It’s At – Locating Data Futures in the Digital Economy Symposium. View recording.
- Barns, Sarah (2022, 21 July) A new deal for city data? The case of Barcelona and the progressive data politics agenda. DMRC Research Seminar: QUT Industry Fellow Dr Sarah Barns. View recording.
- Mitchell, Peta, Rittenbruch, Markus, Foth, Marcus (2022, 23 June) From smart cities to digital town squares: DataCare as a model for community-led urban analysis. DMRC Research Seminar: The Digital Town Square. View recording.
- Mitchell, Peta (2021, 14 July) Tracking and tracing: Mapping new contours of the location economy. Royal Geographical Society Digital Geographies Annual Symposium. View recording.
- Mitchell, Peta, Foth, Marcus, and Rittenbruch, Markus (2020, 28 May) Designing for location awareness and geoprivacy in the age of ‘continuous geosurveillance’. Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) Geospatial Capability Community of Practice series.
- Mitchell, Peta (2020, 29 October) Situating COVIDSafe: Digital epidemiology, contact-tracing apps, and (geo)privacy. COVIDSafe®: tracing, surveillance, and other organised irresponsibilities discussion event. Global Digital Publics Network & the Science and Society Network, Deakin University. View recording.
- Mitchell, Peta, Mann, Monique, and Foth, Marcus (2021, 26–30 July) Speculative smart cities: The platforming of cities during a pandemic era. IACSS Conference, Cultural Research Centre, National University of Singapore.
- Mitchell, Peta (2019) Ambivalent databodies: Navigating trust and privacy in the geo-aware present. Bodies and Devices: Geolocative Media Symposium, 2019, University of Queensland, 28 November 2019. View recording.
Enquiries
For any enquiries about the Urban Media and Digital Geographies Research Group, please contact Peta Mitchell.
DMRC research programs
This group contributes to the research within the following DMRC research programs: