I am a Lecturer in Communication (Digital Media) in the School of Communication and Creative Arts at Deakin University. I coordinate and teach undergraduate and postgraduate media and communications units.
I obtained my doctorate degree in Communications and Media studies from Monash University in 2016. My research expertise lies in the intersections of digital media, (im)mobilities and migration. My research study cuts across different disciplines, including new media, cultural studies, sociology, and anthropology.
I have held Visiting Fellowship in the Centre for Mobilities Research (CeMoRe) at Lancaster University in the United Kingdom (2019) and in the Centre of Excellence in Research on Ageing and Care (CoE AgeCare) at University of Jyväskylä in Finland (2021).
My research interests include transnational communication, mediated intimacies, caregiving at a distance, the digitalisation of public and private spaces, infrastructures of mediated mobilities, and the politics of networked communication. More recently, I have expanded my research work in the context of ageing in a digital age as well as content creation in a postcolonial dimension.
My PhD research investigated the ways in which 21 Overseas Filipino Workers (OFWs) in Melbourne, Australia, and their left-behind family members in the Philippines used mobile devices and networked communications platforms to forge ties and sustain long-distance relationships. I closely examined how mobile device use facilitated an array of communicative opportunities and challenges for the transnational Filipino family. The research study also located the mobile practices of geographically separated Filipino family members in various contexts, including sustaining everyday interactions, connecting to the homeland, re-staging family celebrations, and addressing crises. Further, it unpacked the different tactics deployed by dispersed family members to organise, embody and experience family life at a distance.
One of the major contributions of the study is a critical re-examination of the conduct of transnational family life through mobile device use in the age of smartphones and mobile applications. Extending a critical mobilities lens by the late British Sociologist John Urry in the context of media and communications (Keightley and Reading, 2014), I consider my research study as a vantage point in theorising mediated mobilities in a transnational context. I specifically pay attention to the different, interconnected and asymmetrical infrastructures that engender and undermine technologically mediated mobilities in a mediated environment. This approach illuminates the paradoxical consequences of mobile device in shaping transnational family life. It has also stirred ways of unraveling the politics of mediated mobilties by emphasising the dimensions of communicative mobilities - access, technical competency, affective experience, rhythms, communicative space, and quality of connectivity. Overall, by critically examining the mobile device of geographically separated family members in reclaiming family life at a distance, I unveil how communicative possibilities and inequalities can be reinforced in a networked and mobile society.
I am currently working on various projects, including the following:
(1) (Im)mobile homes: Family life at a distance in the age of mobile media. The manuscript is a post-PhD project which emphasises the role of differentiated, interdependent and asymmetrical social structures and technological infrastructures in shaping an [im]mobile family life at a distance. The book is forthcoming under Oxford University Press as part of the Studies in Mobile Communication Series.
(2) Digital media use of ageing migrants in turbulent times (Funded). The study aims to re-think the role of digital communication technologies in shaping how elderly migrants from Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) people from Melbourne, Australia experience and navigate a global health pandemic. This project is funded by the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation. This work is currently developed for a series of presentations and publications.
(3) YouTube and Brokerage or Social Transactions in the Philippines. This book project examines the role of YouTube in the brokerage of social transactions in the Philippines. I am collaborating with Professor Cheryll Soriano of De La Salle University, Philippines for this project. The book project is under contract with Amsterdam University Press as part of its Asian Visual Culture series.
(4) Cultures of (im)mobile entanglements: Charting the lifeworlds of (im)mobile subjects in and beyond pandemic times (funded). This special issue will appear in the International Journal of Cultural Studies. I am co-editing this work with Dr Koen Leurs, assistant professor in Gender, Media and Migration Studies at the Graduate Program, Department of Media and Culture, Utrecht University, the Netherlands.
Membership
(1) Member, Global Mobilities Network.
(2) Member, Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University.
(3) Board member, Asian Australian Research Studies Network.
(4) Social Media Editor, Asian Journal of Communication. Follow us on Twitter or Facebook.
(5) Internal Member, Asian Media and Cultural Studies Network, Deakin University.
(6) Associate Editor, Asian Congress for Media and Communication Journal
(7) Associate Editor, Plaridel: A Philippine Journal of Communication, Media and Society.
(8), Member, Deakin Motion Lab
(9) Member, International Migration, Integration and Social Cohesion in Europe (IMISCOE)
(10) Co-convener of the newly-formed group, Asia-Pacific Digital Culture and Society. Join us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.
(10) Member, Association of Internet Researchers.
You can reach me via earvin.cabalquinto@deakin.edu.au or ecabalquinto@gmail.com
Photo taken by Daniel Reeders during the AoIR 2019 Conference held in QUT, Brisbane.