From the School of Visual Arts & Design, University of Central Florida: “Dr. Natalie Underberg-Goode is Associate Professor of Digital Media and Folklore in the UCF School of Visual Arts and Design, where she is currently serving as Graduate Program Coordinator for the Emerging Media M.F.A.–Digital Media Track and Digital Media M.A. degrees. She is also core faculty in the Texts & Technology Ph.D. program. Her research examines the use of digital media to preserve and disseminate folklore and cultural heritage, with a focus on digital storytelling and participatory new media design and practice.”
Dr. Underberg-Goode’s work in digital ethnography illustrates how technology can be used to tell compelling stories about people in a way that matters to them. An example is her work on the PeruDigital project. In her book Digital Ethnography: Anthropology, Narrative, and New Media, co-authored with the late Elayne Zorn, she argues that “anthropologists themselves may be the best prepared to understand the impact of digital media on culture and to use their expertise in ethnographic methods to influence the use and even design of new technologies.”
Dr. Underberg-Goode advocates the use of participatory design in ethnography. This means encouraging communities and individuals to work together with ethnographers to represent themselves in the ways they want to be represented.
Digital ethnography can enable Bucknell faculty and students to use technology to understand and talk about the cultural experiences of people of diverse backgrounds. It can also provide them with a way to create meaningful products, performances, and media that extend outside the Bucknell community.
More on Dr. Underberg-Goode’s work: