Theodora Sutton is an ESRC DTP Postdoctoral Research Fellow.
Theodora completed her DPhil at the Oxford Internet Institute in 2021. For her doctoral research, she studied a community of “digital detoxers” at a summer camp for adults and digital detox retreat in Northern California. This camp offered a way to better understand Western techno-anxiety and fears of digital harm, and to situate the moral panic around digital technology firmly within American cultural narratives.
Theodora’s doctoral thesis, “Digital Re-Enchantment”, tells the stories of the people she met in this community, showing how they navigated loneliness, mental health, success, and spirituality while living in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Theodora’s research began in the context of a Fine Art degree at Wimbledon College of Art, where her sculptures and installations explored differing attitudes to online life; whether it makes us feel more or less “connected” to one another.
She is currently writing a book based on her fieldwork and makes ceramic art about digital experiences.
During her DPhil at the OII, Theodora also helped to run the seminar series OxDEG: Oxford Digital Ethnography Group.
Digital Anthropology, Digital Detoxing, Mental Health, Millennials, American culture, American politics, New Age Spirituality, Art, Food Metaphors, Neuroscience, Folk Theories
This project builds on fieldwork at Camp Grounded’s digital detox, where people were fighting a sense of disenchantment in modern life. Focusing on the way devices are interwoven throughout our lives, it rethinks the role of technology in society.
4 February 2020
The Telegraph, 21 March 2022
We assume phones get in the way – but as our writer finds in a rural Essex cabin, they can actually improve our holidays.
Reuters, 25 August 2021
As the pandemic fuels tech fatigue, researchers cast doubt on the benefits of a 'digital detox'.
Professor of Education, the Internet and Society
Rebecca Eynon's research focuses on learning and the Internet, and the links between digital and social exclusion.
Director of Graduate Studies, Associate Professor, Senior Research Fellow
Bernie Hogan examines how to capture, represent and think about social networks, especially personal social networks. His work focuses on the role of design in social media, network capture techniques and theories of relationships.
