Meet the team: Hunter Vaughan

Senior Research Associate, Hunter Vaughan, outlines his plans for building an environmental directive at the Minderoo Centre for Technology & Democracy, through interventions in digital practice and policy.

Having spent the bright-eyed years of my graduate studies between Brighton and Oxford, I am thrilled to be returning to the UK to join the Minderoo Centre for Technology & Democracy and CRASSH.

I plan to make the most of this opportunity to build an environmental directive at the Centre, focusing on policy-oriented research and public-facing scholarship, to help shape the future of tech industry practice and popular understanding.

Compelled by the belief that scholarship should support democratic agency in the public sphere, my research targets interventions in digital practice and policy that challenge the corporate hegemony of neoliberal capitalism.

Through my research at the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy, I will continue exploring potential roles that environmentally sustainable technologies might play in furthering equal access to energy, communication, and media agency.

With a decade of international leadership at the scholarly intersection of digital infrastructures, environmental studies, science communication, and social engagement, and a proven track record of collaborative interdisciplinary research, I am arriving in Cambridge with a toolkit focused on large-scale innovative grant projects.

These grant projects are aimed at generating policy strategies, broadening public education and inclusion, and expanding the societal and industry impacts of academic research at the intersection of digital technologies and the environment.

“Through my research at the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy, I will continue exploring potential roles that environmentally sustainable technologies might play in furthering equal access to energy, communication, and media agency.”

In 2020 I co-founded (and continue as Co-Editor-in-Chief of) the Journal of Environmental Media, which supports a burgeoning interdisciplinary field for environmental approaches to digital screen technologies, environmental communication, and media materialities.

I have also co-authored publications aimed at social impact and applied solutions for socially just and environmentally responsible media practice.

These interdisciplinary pathways and passions have informed my individual and group scholarship.

This includes topics from policy and governance of green film and media practice, to reception studies of engagement and spreadability of short-form sea level rise videos amongst Gen Z audiences. Through my research, I have also explored the use of digital media in Italian cultural and environmental heritage.

Building similar collaborative bridges defines my larger grant projects that engage academic, industry, and policy stakeholders in more environmentally conscientious and socially inclusive futures across the spectrum of digital media technologies.

Below is a brief rundown of currently funded projects:

Greening the Internet

I am Co-PI (with Nicole Starosielski, Anne Pasek, and Anjali Sugadev) on the Internet Society Foundation “Greening the Internet” grant project (2021-23), Sustainability and the Subsea Telecommunication Network.

On this project, I work with an international team of scholarly, legal, and industry experts to deliver a carbon footprint and energy assessment model, environmental best practices report, industry white paper, and policy sustainability suggestions for the subsea cable industry.

This industry underpins the global internet and circulates 95% of transnational commerce and communication.

I look forward to extending this project, which has been featured nationally on NPR, across the Atlantic.

Global Green Media Network

I am also Co-PI and co-director (with Pietari Kääpä) of the AHRC-funded Global Green Media Network (GGMN) (2019-2022).

This project builds on a decade of research and service in the field that led up to my latest monograph, Hollywood’s Dirtiest Secret: the Hidden Environmental Costs of Screen Culture (Columbia University Press, 2019) .

This monograph investigates the material impact of screen media practices, and critiques the social and environmental threats posed by top-down techno-solutionist ideologies heralded by the digital revolution.

GGNM is building a global coalition of film and media scholars, practitioners, and policymakers with the goal of facilitating localised green media production initiatives.

This will culminate with official events at COP26 in Glasgow, the publication of Film and Television in the Era of Accelerated Climate Change: Towards a Greener Screen.

This will lay the groundwork for an emerging collaboration with the UNFCCC and UNESCO.