I am giving a seminar this coming week at the School of Education at Oxford University on how my ICT4D research and practitioner work, generally an exercise in designing for low resource environments and for underrepresented groups, feeds directly into my future-focused work on digital education at the University of Edinburgh. I am not saying this is universally the case but I think we need to start acknowledging that the flow goes both ways; development contexts have largely taught me how to create pathways and openings for more by focusing on the uses and needs of a few.
By Michael Gallagher
My name is Michael Sean Gallagher. I am a Lecturer in Digital Education at the Centre for Research in Digital Education at the University of Edinburgh. I am Co-Founder and Director of Panoply Digital, a consultancy dedicated to ICT and mobile for development (M4D); we have worked with USAID, GSMA, UN Habitat, Cambridge University and more on education and development projects. I was a researcher on the Near Futures Teaching project, a project that explores how teaching at The University of Edinburgh unfold over the coming decades, as technology, social trends, patterns of mobility, new methods and new media continue to shift what it means to be at university. Previously, I was the Research Associate on the NERC, ESRC, and AHRC Global Challenges Research Fund sponsored GCRF Research for Emergency Aftershock Forecasting (REAR) project. I was an Assistant Professor at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (한국외국어대학교) in Seoul, Korea. I have also completed a doctorate at University College London (formerly the independent Institute of Education, University of London) on mobile learning in the humanities in Korea.