BA (Hons.) Literature

Grad. Dip. Education

Grad. Dip. Archaeology

PhD thesis title

Everlasting Proof: How Social Media and Online Surveillance Affects Young People’s Lives

Thesis summary

Alethea’s interest in online surveillance and social media use was sparked in 2010, when The Wall Street Journal published an interview with Eric Schmidt in which he predicted, “apparently seriously, that every young person one day will be entitled automatically to change his or her name on reaching adulthood in order to disown youthful hijinks stored on their friends’ social media sites.” Alethea’s creative work explores the consequences of uploading personal information to the internet, and her exegetical research examines surveillance theory, the practice of personal data collection, and how the surveillance of young people is portrayed in Australian young adult literature.

Proposed completion date: March 2017

Supervisors

Associate Professor Maria Takolander

Dr Adam Brown

Dr Elizabeth Bullen

Affiliations

Australian Society of Authors

Australian Publishers Association

Biography

Alethea was previously a high school teacher and is now a sessional tutor in the Faculty of Education at La Trobe University. She has a passion for young adult literature, and has written a young adult novel that is currently represented by Cameron’s Management in Sydney. She is also an archaeologist, and has published a high school textbook on Ancient Australia. She frequently presents at history and archaeology conferences on Indigenous Australian archaeology.

Contact

Email: tkinsela@deakin.edu.au