Elizabeth Churchill - Principal Research Scientist

Research Area: Econ and Social Sys
Location: Yahoo! Research Silicon Valley

Profile

I am a Principal Research Scientist at Yahoo! Research in Santa Clara, CA. I work in the area of Media Experience Research, my area of interest being social media.

At the highest level, I am interested in thinking about the emerging digital media "ethnoscapes" (the fluid, shifting landscape of people and groups - passersby, tourists, immigrants, exiles) that make internet life.

Following previous work in Japan, the US and the UK, I increasingly take a centri-cultural approach - that is, being curious about the ways in which social technologies and social media are created, consumed, adopted and adapted in different (although sometimes overlapping) local and national cultures.

More concretely, my work continues threads that have been previously developed: mediated collaboration, mobile connectivity, transmedia technologies, digital archive and memory, and the development of emplaced media spaces. Most of these are elaborated in more detail in my written publications.

Recent Publications, Projects and News

  • The Dating Game - How do busy people find love? Increasingly, they turn to online dating sites like Yahoo! Personals. And, just as important, how do people use technology to initiate new relationships? Do they use online calendaring tools to schedule a date weeks in advance? Or do they use mobile devices to micro-coordinate their plans, adjusting the time and place of their meeting according to what’s going on at that particular moment?
  • EPIC 2007 - Being Heard - The third international Ethnographic Praxis in Industry Conference (EPIC) recently took place in Keystone, Colorado. Representing Yahoo! Research at the conference was Elizabeth Churchill, who served on the EPIC steering committee and was a curator for workshops.
  • Featured Researcher - Elizabeth Churchill - A psychologist by training, Churchill has devoted her career to studying people—especially how they adopt and adapt technologies into their everyday lives.
  • Yahoo! Reaches Beyond at CHI 2007 - Several workshops, papers, a prominent booth, and a highly attended bus tour marked Yahoo!’s involvement in the Computer/Human Interaction 2007 Conference, held April 28 to May 3 in San Jose, California.