Jon researches and publishes work on digital culture and creative industries, specifically exploring social media. This work is applied to his role as the Degree Leader for Web & New Media within our undergraduate programmes, and his teaching on the MA Social Media. His industry experience in new media also makes him a key member of our knowledge transfer team.

Prior to joining the Birmingham School of Media and the Birmingham Centre for Media & Cultural research as an academic, Jon worked in the creative industries in Birmingham for eight years on new media and film production projects. Prior to this he was a student of the School of Media.

One of Jon’s first tasks when he joined the Birmingham School of Media was to provide technical assistance to the AHRC KTF team, helping them to build prototypes as part of their projects. Jon has since led or developed a number of knowledge transfer projects, including several KTP projects and the Digital Champions project for Birmingham City Council.

Jon teaches across a number of programmes in the Birmingham School of Media; specialist areas taught include web and social media production techniques, innovation and enterprise, social media, visual culture, and digital culture. Jon also leads the BA (Hons) Media and Communication (New Media) degree specialism within the school, including evaluating and developing our courses, as well as networking with industry and recruiting and managing visiting lecturers and guest speakers. Jon is an external examiner to the PgCert Digital Media Communication at the University of Ulster and to the BA (Hons) Advertising at University College Falmouth.

Knowledge based supervisor, various KTP projects
Project management and KT delivery, Digital Champion – [http://bit.ly/bhamdc]
Local Researcher, Creative Metropoles [creativemetropoles.eu]
Reviewer for Higher Education Academy Doctoral Programme [http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/doctoral-programme]
Programme Committee, Making Sense of Microposts, 2010-2011 [http://socsem.open.ac.uk/msm2012/]
Various peer reviews of books and articles
External expert for revalidation, Coventry University
Chair, Sutton Coldfield Festival of Arts
Convenor & Speaker, Digital Britain Unconference – West Midlands
AHRC Knowledge Transfer Fellowship, Technical Developer
Account manager & creative – web & graphic design industry

Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/)

Public Engagement Ambassador (http://www.publicengagement.ac.uk/how-we-help/ambassadors-scheme)

Jon is currently working on his PhD project – an investigation of hyperlocal blogging in the UK. In addition to this work, he is developing research outputs from recent knowledge transfer activities.

Jon has worked on a number of research projects into teaching and learning including the current ‘Stories and Streams’ project which is he managing for the Centre [http://bcumedia.com/storiesandstreams/]. He has also recently been working on a project with Inger-Lise Bore into Twitter activity between fans of the HBO television series ‘The West Wing’ [http://theplan.co.uk/previously-on-the-west-wing-on-twitter/].

Hickman, J. & Jones, J. (2012) The Imaginary SXSWi: If SXSWi is a Dream, Then How Do We Wake Up From It? Flow.TV 15.08 – Special Issue: SXSW. Available: http://flowtv.org/2012/03/the-imaginary-sxswi/ [accessed 13/3/12].

Hickman, J. Kane, D. & Reardon, A. (2011) Enabling Digital Participation in Higher Education. Educational Futures 3.2 Available: http://www.educationstudies.org.uk/materials/hickman_final.pdf [accessed 21/6/11].

Hickman, J. (2011) Swede It! Theorising Social Objects and Fan Culture in Social Media Marketing. Online Mainline 2011, 15th September 2011, Birmingham, UK.

Bore, IL & Hickman, J. (2011) Let Bartlet be Bartlet? The West Wing continues on Twitter. Transforming Audiences 3, 1st -2nd September 2011, London, UK.

Bore, IL & Hickman, J. (2011) What’s next? Carrying on the conversations: The West Wing on Twitter. MeCCSA 2011, 12th-14th January 2011, Salford, UK.

Hickman, J. (2010) What’s the hash tag? Folksonomy, brand, and control: organising and owning conversations on Twitter. ECREA 2010, 12th-15th October 2010, Hamburg, Germany.

Hickman, J. & Kane, D. (2010) Supporting students’ learning with web 2.0: near-distance learning and student choice in media education. Media Education Summit 2010, 7th & 8th September 2010, Birmingham City University, UK.

Hickman, J. (2010) Help me investigate: the social practices of investigative journalism. IAMCR Braga 2010, 18th-22nd July 2010, Braga, Portugal.

Hickman, J. & Kane, D. (2010) Enabling digital participation in higher education. Research Informed Teaching: delivering participation, engagement and enquiry, 14th July 2010, Staffordshire University, UK.

Hickman, J. (2009) . 2nd Digital Cultures Workshop: Social Media Publics #digcult09, 4th-5th June 2009, Salford University.