Nick Dyer-Witheford
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Nick Dyer-Witheford is a Professor in the Faculty of Information & Media Studies, University of Western Ontario, in London, Ontario, Canada. Born in Britain, yet a holder of a New Zealand passport, he came to Canada in his twenties and settled in Vancouver. Married, with two daughters, he lives in London (Canada).
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[edit] Teaching
As a teacher of undergrads, graduate and Ph.D. students, Dyer-Witheford is known for incorporating multi-media into his lectures. Notable for conveying his own ideas as well as soliciting honest feedback from students, he was mentioned in Maclean's Guide to Canadian Universities, 2004 as one of the most popular professors at Western. Professor Dyer-Witheford was included on Western's University Students' Council 2004-2005 Teaching Honour Roll. The teachers on the Honour Roll are those who achieved an accumulated average of 6.3 or higher out of 7 on undergraduate teaching evaluations.
[edit] Academic Background
Dyer-Witheford did not attend university until the age of twenty-eight. He earned his undergraduate, graduate and Ph.D. degree at Simon Fraser University. A Communications Professor by academic discipline, he came to The University of Western Ontario's Faculty of Information and Media Studies (FIMS) to teach the political economy of media and political economy of information. A self proclaimed "Marxist-in some sort of strange, mutated way", Dyer-Whitheford presents a solid understanding of Classical, Neo-classical and Marxist-Socialist perspectives on economic history and current power and ownership in the global economy.
A student activist on campus at SFU, Dyer-Witheford was actually hit on the head by a book authored by Antonio Negri in the library at SFU while he walked through the stacks searching for a Ph.D. thesis. "It literally just dropped out off the shelf and hit me on the head." Negri, the Italian intellectual, political activist, and founder of the Autonomia movement, inspired Dyer-Witheford to work towards a better understanding of Autonomist Marxism and its appliction to the future of technology and the global economy. His first published book, Cyber-Marx: Cycles and Circuits of Struggle in High-Technology Capitalism is the fruit of this initial exploration. He has also been actively conducting research into the media of video games and their cultural and social impact.
[edit] List of works
- Cyber-Marx: Cycles and Circuits of Struggle in High-Technology Capitalism University of Illinois Press (2000)
- Digital Play: The Interaction of Technology, Culture, and Marketing by Stephen Kline, Nick Dyer-Witheford, Greig De Peuter,McGill-Queen's University Press (2003)
[edit] See also
- Coleman, Sarah and Nick Dyer-Witheford. Canadian Video Game Industry (web site) available online.
