Distinguished Professor Larissa Hjorth

Distinguished Professor Larissa Hjorth is a socially-engaged artist and digital ethnographer with vast leadership experience managing complex stakeholders within and outside the academy. Since 2000, Hjorth has been researching the socio-cultural dimensions of mobile media in the Asia–Pacific. Hjorth has two decades experience working on cross-cultural, interdisciplinary projects focusing on creative, ethnographic and critical methods for understanding intergenerational media practices around play, games, loss, grief and resilience. In 2020, Hjorth was named one of the top 40 lifetime researchers by The Australian—this was equated by h-index (42 [citation matrix]) over the course of a career.

Hjorth has extensive experience in research leadership positions. From 2017-2022, Hjorth was the director of the Design & Creative Practice ECP Platform. The Platform focuses on interdisciplinary collaboration with industry and creative solutions to real-world social and ecological problems. In 2016 she was Acting Associate Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Research Capability (Sept-Dec) and Design & Social Context Higher Degrees by Research Director. From 2013-2015 she was Deputy Dean of Research & Innovation in the School of Media & Communication, RMIT University. In 2011, Hjorth and Horst founded the Digital Ethnography Research Centre (DERC).

Hjorth has published over 100 publications on the topic—recent publications include Haunting Hands (with Cumiskey, Oxford Uni Press), Understanding Social Media (with Hinton, 2nd Edition, SAGE), Creative Practice Ethnographies (with Harris, Jungnickel and Coombs, Rowman & Little), Ambient Play (with Richardson, MIT Press), Exploring Minecraft (with Richardson, Davies and Balmford, Palgrave), Games & Gaming Cultures (with Richardson and Davies, SAGE) and Digital Media Practices in Households (et al. AUP). In the past five years, Hjorth has published two single authored books, twelve co-authored books, five edited collections, edited five Routledge commissioned Handbook/Companions, five edited journal special issues, 40 book chapters and 48 peer reviewed journal articles. Hjorth is committed to both traditional and non-traditional outputs as modes of dissemination and research translation.

Hjorth has a strong track record in research leadership and has received over $4 million in grants in Australia and internationally. She has worked with many industry partners including Intel, and has successfully been CI on four Australian Research Council (ARC) grants (lead CI on two DPs and one LP), Young and Well CRC, CoE Cultural and Creative Industries (CCI), as well as numerous arts funding and fellowships including Australian Council for the Arts New Media fellowship, Japan Foundation, Brain Korea fellowship, Asialink arts residency and Australia Council Tokyo studio.

Distinguished Professor Larissa Hjorth has received the following key grants.

Australian Research Council Grants

• Australian Research Council discovery (with I. Richardson) Games of Being Mobile: mobile gaming in everyday life (DP140104295) 2014-2017.
• Australian Research Council Linkage Grant with Intel (with S. Pink & H. Horst) Locating the Mobile (LP130100848) 2013-2016.
• Australian Research Council Linkage Grant Spatial dialogues: public art and climate change with Grollo and Fairfax. CI L. Williams, P. Samartzis, L. Hjorth, K. Sharp, D. Redfern and S. Perry (LP100200088) 2010-2013.
• Australian Research Council Discovery fellowship (with M. Arnold) investigating online communities in the Asia-Pacific for three years (DP0986998) 2009-2012.

Network Grants

• ACCAN (Australian Communication Consumer Action Network) grant (U3A & City of Whittlesea) (lead CI Figueiredo) Co-designing Participatory Strategies With Older Adults to Reduce Perceived Risk and Promote Digital Inclusion (2020-2021) $100k
• Canadian SSHRC Aging in Data (AiD) led by Prof K. Sawchuk (Concordia University, 2021-2025) $3.5 m
• COST 298 Action: Connecting a Broadband Society (2006-2009)
• COST IS 1202 Action: The Dynamics of a Virtual Work (2011-2014)

Hjorth is currently supervising the following Supervision Projects

• The Mundane Spectacle: Livestreaming in China.
• International students, media and wellbeing.
• A Play of Bodies: A Phenomenology of Videogame Experience.
• Ecologies of the Televisual: Children’s Use of the Televisual in Melbourne, Australia.
• The Tree of Everywhere.
• Understanding Material Representations of Physical Activity.
• Ajumma and new media in Seoul.
• Affective Critical Play and New Media.
• New Visualities for Recovery.
• Livestreaming and gaming in Melbourne.
• Home & Away: A visual study of Cambodian diaspora.
• Generative Art for Calm Technologies.
• THE BRUITEUR: Disruptive Listening in Performance and the Everyday.
• Contemporary museum art education.

With a focus on these key supervision topics:

• Socio-cultural use of mobile media technologies in the Asia-Pacific region
• Gender and gaming
• Art and new media
• creative, critical and ethnographic methods
• intergenerational media practices
• more-than-human relationality
• grief and ritual.