PIP SHEA

Branding development, UI and UX design within the Digital Engagement Unit at the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services.

Director of hackerspace and technology charity, Belfast (2015-2016).

Research associate on the ARC Discovery project ‘Urban Cultural Policy and the Changing Dynamics of Cultural Production,’ with Professor Justin O’Connor and Dr Xin Gu at Monash University 2017-2018.

ABC Radio National - freelance designer, Sydney, Australia 2008-10

Triple J Radio - freelance designer, Sydney, Australia 2009

Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) - senior designer, Melbourne, Australia 2007-08

ABC Radio National - freelance designer, Melbourne, Australia 2005-07

ABC International - freelance designer, Melbourne, Australia 2005-07

Australia Network Television - freelance designer, Melbourne, Australia 2005-07

ABC Radio National - freelance designer, Melbourne, Australia 2005-07

ABC Arts Online - designer, developer, producer, Melbourne, Australia 2002-03

Design and development of tools for impact measurement in grassroots ‘video for change’ projects. An initiative of the MIT Center for Civic Media and Engage Media 2014

Exhibition design and development for the Northern Ireland Science Festival project focussing on the Internet of Things 2015-16

Fibreculture 26: Entanglements—activism and technology

This issue of the Fibreculture Journal explores the entanglements that arise due to frictions between the philosophies embedded within technologies and the philosophies embedded within activism.

Editors: Pip Shea, Tanya Notley and Jean Burgess

Publisher: Open Humanities Press

Investigated the history of WiFi in Australia for the Internet Histories project, an Asia-Pacific wide research project encompassing China, Japan, and Korea. Led by Professor Gerard Goggin, head of the School of Media at the University of Sydney 2012

Book chapter in Making Our World: The Hacker and Maker Movements in Context, 2018

Hacker agency and the Raspberry Pi: Informal education and social innovation in a Belfast makerspace

Hackers circumvent to invent. They see the potential in things (their affordances) as well as themselves (their abilities and capabilities) to create anew with existing materials. Hackers model new structures, devise alternative infrastructures, or exploit systems. This process of material reimagining can help people gain a greater understanding of things and systems, but what forms of agency are required to hack in the first instance? The following chapter responds to this question, supported by an investigation of hacking activities in Farset Labs, a makerspace in Belfast, Northern Ireland. It argues that informal education activities performed at Farset Labs are helping individuals and groups to understand how to support hacking activities. This is framed as nurturing hacker agency: enacting the conditions to support the inversion, subversion, or reconfiguration of things. The inquiry unfolds around Farset’s Raspberry Jam program—a monthly workshop exploring Raspberry Pi single-board computers—situating it as an appropriate socio-technical system to nurture hacker agency. Empirical data was collected over a period of one year at Farset Labs. My observations were gleaned while participating in the co-working space, attending public events, participating in member meetings, and volunteering at three Raspberry Jam events.

Book chapter in Rethinking Digital Citizenship: Control, Contest and Culture, 2016

Civic practices, design, and makerspaces

Makerspaces have helped frame processes of design, adaptation, and the repair of things and systems—hardware, software, networks, tools, food, currencies, energy, bacteria—as social activities (Sleigh et al., 2015). Makerspaces have also been revealed as sites that encourage self-directed civic practices and the assembling of new civic identities, or DIY citizenship (Nascimento, 2014; Toombs et al., 2014; Kubitschko, 2015; Shea, 2015; Hunsinger and Schrock, 2016). This chapter offers an additional contextual review and further evidence of emergent civic practices linked to makerspaces, focusing attention on peace-building projects in Northern Ireland. It specifically examines the role of design and material engagement in the performance of these ethical and social interventions. The study elucidates how the propagation of alternative thinking and responsible action in Northern Ireland’s makerspaces is challenging normative understandings of civic participation.

Researched and wrote short form articles and an exhibition catalogue essay for an international programme of art-making, exhibitions, and training based at Fab Labs in Madrid, Limerick, Belfast and Derry, 2016.

Acting executive producer and online community manager at ABC Pool participatory media platform, Sydney, Australia 2009-10

-        Maintained a best practice online engagement hub

-        Negotiated online community governance frameworks

-        Developed participatory media methodologies and protocols

-        Supervised project teams

-        Stakeholder management

-        Published a journal article situating ABC Pool as innovation infrastructure