Heather Horst
Heather is a Postdoctoral Scholar at University of California, Berkeley. Heather received her PhD in Anthropology from University College London. Her thesis, entitled “Back a Yaad: Constructions of Home Among Jamaica’s Return Migrant Community” examined the role of material culture in the process of return migration and community development. After completing her dissertation, she returned to Jamaica to examine development, new information and communication technologies and the ‘digital divide’ as part of a large-scale DFID-funded project entitled “Information Society: Emergent Technologies and Development in the South” which compared the relationship between ICTs and development in Ghana, India, Jamaica and South Africa. Her new book with Daniel Miller entitled “The Cell Phone: An Anthropology of Communication” (Oxford and NY: Berg, 2006) explores the specific implications of the cell phone and the cell phone industry in rural and urban Jamaica. Heather’s research in the digital youth project integrates her interest in homes and families, media and technology as well as relationships of power and access as they are expressed among middle class families in Silicon Valley.
