Dr. Nina Wakeford
Nina Wakeford is Reader in Sociology at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her publications include studies of feminist and queer internet communities, internet cafes and mobile devices as well as the use of powerpoint and theories of atmosphere. She has also produced installations and interventions in academic conferences using film and performance. Alongside Celia Lury she edited “Inventive Methods: The Happening of the Social” (Routledge, 2012). She is currently exploring how sociology might work with the openness and ambiguity of inventive methods. Alongside her work in sociology, she also has studied fine art. She uses her background in both sociology and fine art to make work which begins with unfinished business of past social movements, and the challenges of revisiting the energies that they created. She is interested in how to enact demands through material engagements, the way in which identification/disidentification is forged, modes of empathy and inhabitation, and the risks of staying loyal/respectful to the kinds of materials that initiate the work. She often supplements a vocabulary of the handmade object with time-based media or live performative elements.