Dr Bryce Weber
Contact details | Research supervision | Publications
Bryce has taught in the Centre since 2005, primarily in the Communications and Media Studies Program. He has also taught elsewhere in Australia (UWA, Melbourne University, La Trobe), in Canada (York University, UBC, Simon Fraser), and in Russia, at the Volga Region Academy of Civil Service in Saratov
He received a doctorate from the Department of Political Economy at the University of Toronto where he did his dissertation on Habermas’s theory of communicative action and democratic theory. His research has a cross-disciplinary, critical theory orientation and focuses on questions of ideology, political economy, and cultural production in an era of media spin when more democratic, rather than managed, discourse is a matter of public urgency. The question that is central to his research is whether a non-instrumental account of communicative action, broadly understood, can be developed without it degenerating into a form of empty idealism. This overall concern finds its focus in his research in the particular areas of: accounts of the public sphere and deliberative democracy; debates concerning the viability of public service broadcasting in an age of privatisation; the political economic, cultural and social impact of the shift to a knowledge economy; and in international relations and global political context within which these changes are taking place
Research supervision
- Theories of democracy and democratic communications
- Criticisms and explanations of ideology and power
- Public service broadcasting and the public sphere
- Cultural production / the arts and politics
- Arts funding policies
- Social, cultural and political economic dimensions of intellectual property
- International political economy (particularly TRIPS and GATS)
Recent publications
Negative Autonomy and the Intuitions of Democracy. Philosophy and Social Criticism. Volume 32, Issue 3, May 2006.
The University as a Public Convenience: Some Thoughts on the Rationale Underpinning the Idea of the Public University. Journal for the Public University, Volume 3, 2006
Public outreach
Bryce has been a member of the management committee of the Association for the Public University since 2000, and is currently treasurer of the organisation.