Interview with Kathleen M Cumiskey

Kathleen M Cumiskey’s feminist research on gender, mobile media, safety, vulnerability and grief has spanned across the previous two decades. This interview focuses on three of Cumiskey’s key texts, and suggests how gendered practices of safety, security and intimacy have changed since the introduction of smartphones. It addresses contemporary changes in mobile and social media practices, and how these influence socio-political smartphone uses. Cumiskey discusses the implications of women’s smartphone practices for generating feelings safety and security in public space; how smartphones can both enhance and limit the ways women participate in public space; and how smartphones engender particular expressions of vulnerability, especially in the context of grief and loss. The interview concludes with a discussion of the subversive potential of mobile media and smartphone communications in opening up transformative modes of engaging with others and the world.