Julie Thomas recently gave a paper on "Museum Exhibitions, Immigration, and French Cultural Policy" at the International Association of Media & Communications Research Conference in Stockholm.

Julie Thomas joined AUP as an adjunct Assistant Professor of International Communications in 1997, and became a full time Assistant Professor in 2001 and an Associate Professor in 2004. She has had a long and varied teaching career, having been a Maitre de Conference in the French university system, taught at Parsons’ School of Design, Paris, the Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, Trinity College, Dublin, and Harvard University among others. Her doctoral thesis (University of London) dealt with how the depiction of England in American writing was manipulated as a tool in the formation of the early American national identity. She has also studied aspects of visual culture and communications ( History of the Fine & Decorative Arts at the Victoria & Albert Museum Study Centre), and her courses at AUP include Communicating Fashion, Colour as Communication , and Media Aesthetics. In 2004 she organized a conference at AUP entitled “Mediating Fashion: Mediating Paris”, in which experts from the fields of sociology of fashion, fashion design, fashion media (journalism, public relations) and fashion retailing addressed the diverse ways in which fashion is mediated in contemporary global culture and how/if this process continues to mediate Paris as fashion site. Current research in visual communications focuses on colour; in 2005 she presented a paper on colour, globalization, and cultural space at the 10th Congress of the International Colour Association, was an invited speaker at the joint Summer Academy of the Fédération Française de la Couleur and the Centre d’Information de la Couleur, and was a guest participant in several seminars at the Ecole Nationale des Sciences Sociales. She is currently researching and preparing a book “Colour Values”, an inter-disciplinary exploration of colour cognition and the creation of cultural space.

Thomas also is engaged in current research in the field of digital media. Research in the late ‘90’s on conceptualizations of cyberspace in cyberpunk literature and on hypertext led to more recent work on theories of digital interactivity and attention, as well as to the course Theory and Practice of Digital Interactivity. With Prof. Claudia Roda of the Computer Science department, she has organized workshops on Digital Interaction (at the International Symposium on Information and Communication Technologies Conference, Trinity College, Dublin, 2003) and on “Designing for Attention” (at the 18th annual British Human Computer Interaction Group Annual Conference, 2004.) A special issue of the journal Computers in Human Behaviour (Elsevier) on attention aware systems , guest edited by Roda and Thomas, is to appear in 2006. This issue also contains their joint article on attention aware systems. The Encyclopedia of Human Computer Interaction, edited by C. Ghaoui (IDEA Group), just published (2006), contains two entries – one on digital interactivity and one on attention aware systems, by Roda and Thomas. Part of their current research deals with the interplay between cultural values and digital media use, particularly in terms of digital learning.

1998              

“La Cyber-woman - plus ça change?”  In Femme et Nature (Maison des Sciences de l’Homme d’Aquitaine, Bordeaux)      

1998

“From ‘Crime’ to ‘Clave’ to ‘Promised Land’: the Changing ‘Values’ of Ethnicity, Cultural Identity, and the Mainstream”, OVERhere, A European Journal of American Culture, (18,2) Winter,1998 (University of Nottingham)

2000

“The Female ‘Body of Knowledge’ in Gibson’s Neuromancer” Résonances: Femmes et savoir(s), Numéro 5, avril.

2000

“Cyberspace, Gothic Space” in Fenêtres sur l’Obscur, ed. Max Duperray (Publications de l’Université de Provence)                       

2003

(with Claudia Roda)  Digital Interaction: Introduction to the first international workshop. International Symposium on Information and Communication Technologies (Digital Interaction workshop), Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, Computer Science Press, ISICT 2003 Conference Proceedings, ACM Conference Proceedings Series and ACM Digital Library..

2004

(with Claudia Roda)  Designing for attention. Proceedings Annual conference of the British HCI group; Designing for Attention workshop. A. Dearden and L. Watts editors. Leeds, UK 6-10 September 2004. Vol. 2 pp. 249-250

2005 

(with Claudia Roda)  Digital Interactivity: various points of view. in C. Ghaoui (Ed.), Encyclopaedia of Human Computer Interaction,  IDEA Group. 2005

2005 

(with Claudia Roda)  Attention Aware Systems. in C. Ghaoui (Ed.), Encyclopaedia of HCI. IDEA Group. 2005

2005

“Colour, Globalisation, and Cultural Space”. Proceedings, 10^th Congress of the International Colour  Association, AIC Colour 2005, Vol. 2, p.1375.

2006                                         

(with Claudia Roda,  Ann Borel,  Eugeni Gentchev)  “Digital image library   development in academic environment: designing and testing usability”, OCLC Systems & Services, Vol. 21, No. 4, 2005, Emerald Group.  

Forthcoming (2006): 

“Home Again, Cathleen?”  in J.Thomas and M. Ghabris (eds.) Woman as Written  (invited articles from the  colloque “Femme et Société en Europe”),  Centre d’Etudes et de Recherche sur les Civilisations et les Littératures Européennes,  Université du Littoral

2006

(with Claudia Roda)   Attention Aware Systems: Theory, Application, and Research Agenda. Computers in Human Behavior, Forthcoming  2006.

In preparation:   Book :  Colour Values: Colour and Cultural Space

Editorial:

Co-Editor (with 11 others) of the Proceedings of the International Symposium on Information and Communication Technologies, Dublin Ireland. 2003

Forthcoming :  Co-editor with Maryam Ghabris of  Woman as Written  (invited articles from the  colloque “Femme et Société en Europe”), (Centre d’Etudes et de Recherche sur le Civilisations et les Littératures Européennes,  Université du Littoral) 2006.

Guest  editor with Claudia Roda for the special issue on "Attention Aware Systems" of the Journal Computers in Human Behavior to appear , 2006.