Meet our two Programme Directors for the Digital Futures MA, Dr Giota Alevizou and Dr Rob Gallagher.
Dr Giota Alevizou and Dr Rob Gallagher share their academic journeys, teaching passions, and how they’ve shaped this innovative online degree exploring the cultural, social, and ethical dimensions of our digital world.
What’s your role in the Digital Futures MA at King’s?
Giota: As co-director, I work with Rob to shape the programme’s curriculum and guide its wider engagement and promotion. I also teach our core module Mapping New Trends in the Digital Landscape, where students critically examine the forces reshaping digital culture and society. Rob meanwhile teaches our Designing Sustainable Digital Futures module.
What’s your academic background and specialism?
Rob: My background is in literary studies - I got my BA in English literature from the University of Oxford and stayed there to do a Master’s in late-Victorian literature. For my PhD, I switched to thinking about contemporary digital culture. I’ve published on everything from political memes to ASMR videos and electronic music, but I’m particularly interested in digital games, and in how gaming is influencing art, culture and politics.
Giota: I hold a BA in Classics, Philosophy and Linguistics from Greece, but then I came to the UK and switched to media, communication, and cultural studies, and developed a special interest on how digital technologies shape knowledge, power, and participation. I now research and teach at the intersections of critical technology studies, platform capitalism, and digital culture.
I’ve published on a range of things, from cities and civic technologies, information and education Commons and principally knowledge media. I'm interested in how Artificial Intelligence intersects with collective intelligence and the challenges it poses to sustainability, human values, and the ethics that shape our consumption of technologies.
What was your involvement with developing the programme?
Rob: I joined King’s in 2023, just as the MA was starting development. Giota and I designed the core modules together and collaborated with colleagues to create learning materials that offer an overview of key issues while capitalising on the particular strengths of the King’s faculty. I’ve also had a hand in developing some of our specialist modules, like Games Industries and Cultures.
Giota: We both wanted to help design a programme that equips students to think critically and creatively about possible digital futures, not just in terms of technology, but also in terms of culture, society, and ethics.
What should prospective students considering the Digital Futures MA know about the programme?
Rob: This is a humanities degree, so the emphasis is on thinking critically about the economic, cultural and societal impacts of emerging technologies, and on imagining more ethical, inclusive and sustainable futures. We draw on theory and philosophy, as well as empirical research, to think through big questions – from digital colonialism to the future of work, health and money.
While we certainly talk out what’s happening right now, we also equip students to look beyond the Silicon Valley hype cycle. Part of that involves looking back to earlier phases in the history of technology to identify precedents and continuities.
Another defining characteristic is the way that the programme draws on cutting-edge research from leading experts in the field – people like Professor Joanna Zylinska, an expert in generative AI and the arts, or Professor Christina Scharff, a leading digital activism researcher.
We also take an innovative approach to assessment. While there are certainly more traditional essay assignments on the MA, students also create presentations, write reports and do deep-dives on the design of apps and interfaces. Some modules offer the option of submitting a creative project. Our focus is on helping students to work out where and how they can intervene to build a better digital future, and on giving them opportunities to build the skills and knowledge they need to do that.
What to you are the key benefits of an online degree?
Giota: A key benefit of an online MA is flexibility: students can engage with readings and activities at a pace that fits around work, family, or other commitments. The materials are designed so you can log in and make progress whenever you have time.
Another major strength is the diversity of the cohort and their ability to build learning communities – people join us from across the globe, bringing a wide range of academic and professional backgrounds. This creates lively discussions in forums and webinars, where perspectives from people coming from marketing, education, computer science, or classics come together to exchange ideas and work with each other.
And finally, a bit about you. What’s your favourite book? How do you like to relax at the weekend? What’s been one of your most enjoyable memories from your time teaching at King’s?
Rob: You can’t ask a literature graduate to pick one book, so here are two short novels about technology that I love: for the Victorianist in me, it’s Henry James’ In the Cage (about a naive telegraph operator who gets caught up in an aristocratic scandal), and for the gamer it’s Dennis Cooper’s God Jr. (about a grieving dad who loses himself in his son’s favourite videogame).
To relax, I like going dancing or watching movies. In terms of teaching highlights, I love supervising dissertations and watching students dive into researching topics they’re passionate about – though it was also very fun filming a segment for Digital Futures in an arcade full of retro classics like Crazy Taxi and The House of the Dead...
Giota: My favourite book? Hard to pick…But William Gibson’s Neuromancer, hands down. It’s like the fever dream that invented the internet before the internet – cyberpunk noir, console cowboys, robot tricksters. It still shapes the way we imagine digital futures (and dystopias). On weekends, I try to unplug a bit – wandering through London’s galleries, hunting down good coffee, or cooking Greek dishes for friends.
One of my favourite memories from teaching at King’s is seeing students light up in a seminar or webinar when a theory suddenly clicks by bringing in examples from current affairs (or Netflix’s Black Mirror) – or when nascent researchers go on a deep dive into the dissertation topics.
Master’s supervision is one of my favourite things, as is taking students to ‘walkshops’ to explore and dispel ideas of London as a ‘tech city’, or ‘smart city’, through its diverse and rich histories and presents. Students often refer to these walkshops as ‘Giota’s maps’ or Dr Gio-gle’. As aGreek who’s lived in London most of her life, I find it quite amusing.
Thanks for chatting to us Rob and Giota! Discover more about the Digital Futures MA, a programme that explores emerging technologies, cultural and societal impacts, and equips you to design innovative, ethical, and sustainable digital solutions:
