Gender, Technology and Enterprise Event
- Time:
- 10:30 - 12:00
- Date:
- 20 March 2019
- Venue:
- Winchester School of Art, Lecture Theatre A
For more information regarding this event, please email Dr Dan Ashton at d.k.ashton@soton.ac.uk .
Event details
This talk brings together Dr Carol Ekinsmyth (University of Portsmouth) and Rebecca van Rooijen (Benchpeg) to explore the theme of gender, technology and enterprise in relation to their respective research projects and industry experiences. The talk is hosted by The Transforming Creativity Research Group and MA in Global Media Management is free and open to attend.
Abstracts
Extending the location of ‘enterprise’ into life: Intimate geographies of the digital (Dr Carol Ekinsmyth)
Digital technologies are revolutionising where and when work (and by extension– enterprise) can be done. They are, in turn, changing who can perform this work, the nature of the skills required and the notion of the ‘ideal worker’. Gender identity can be understood as an outcome – rather than a cause – of working experiences (Butler 1990, Richardson 2018), and these are changed or potentially changed by digital technologies that enable work to extend beyond the formal workplace and into the home, family, social, leisure and ‘intimate’ spaces of the worker. Through the ambivalent and contested figure of the ‘mumpreneur’ (Ekinsmyth 2014) and its extreme – the parent-blogger - this mini-session will explore the gendered affordances and darker implications of the ‘digital workplace’ for enterprise.
How I accidentally became a ‘Digital Entrepreneur’ (Rebecca van Rooijen)
The presentation will cover a journey of a ‘professional’ Creative Industries career route in London to the accidental adoption of digital entrepreneurship and the founding of a groundbreaking business. 13 years on, the business has adopted its own working practices developed from learnings and experiences from the ‘traditional working environment’ and had adapted these for a work life balance and an unmasculine ‘female way of working’. The uses of philanthropic ideals throughout its approach will also be covered, a founding core principal which led to its foundation.
Biographies
Carol Ekinsmyth is a Human Geographer at the University of Portsmouth who specialises in work, labour and entrepreneurship and their relationships to ‘place’. Her research has often taken a gender-lens to these subjects, recently in her examination of the phenomenon of ‘mumpreneurship’, and previously as applied to freelance work and self-employment in the creative industries. She is currently working on the embeddedness of creative industry businesses in medium sized cities.
Originally trained as a Jewellery Designer, Rebecca van Rooijen has amassed over 20 years’ experience in the Jewellery Industry. Through a varied and unique career path which has included amongst other things managing the Goldsmiths' Fair jewellery selling event which generated £3M in sales in 7 days; delivering the regeneration and communication focused £3.5M Jewellery Sector Investment Plan for London Borough of Camden; and latterly having designed and delivered a regeneration project; the £17.5M Goldsmiths’ Centre in Central London. She is Founder of Benchpeg, the online jewellery resource established in 2006, which also publishes the first to market weekly, digital newsletter for the UK jewellery industry with 10k subscribers. She is a Freeman of the City of London, a non-executive Committee Member of the Goldsmiths’ Company, a Trustee of Bishopsland Educational Trust and Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths.