Stuart Ekberg

Room 254, Hughes Building Fax +61 (08) 8303 3770 stuart.ekberg@adelaide.edu.au

Area of Research

Conversation Analysis

Memberships

Discourse and Social Psychology (DASP) unit, School of Psychology

International Pragmatics Association (IPrA)

Society of Australasian Social Psychologists (SASP)

Awards

Faculty of Health Sciences Divisional Scholarship (2007-2010)
D R Stranks Postgraduate Travelling Fellowship (2008)
Adelaide Graduate Centre Research Abroad Scholarship (2008)
Faculty of Health Sciences Postgraduate Travelling Fellowship (2008)
Walter & Dorothy Duncan Trust recipient (2008)

Psychology Research Interests

The overall aim of my research is to contribute to a body of knowledge on the structural properties of human communicative interaction.

In the case of my doctoral research, this will involve the study of recorded telephone conversations between a community aged care service provider, based in South Australia, and the clients that the service supports. The data will thus be prototypical of studies utilizing conversation analysis (naturalistic, talk-in-interaction) to study institutional practices.

My thesis will focus on the ways in which both staff and clients collaboratively work towards accomplishing the business of the telephone calls (the remote organization of services that promote independent living). I am examining the way that service arrangements are made, maintained, and modified through telephonic interaction. The specific focus of my analysis to date is on how staff members produce announcements, requests, or offers in the process of soliciting a change to a client’s existing service arrangements. I am working to identify why one of these (announcements) is by far the most prevalent way of seeking to make this change.

Further analysis for my thesis will contrast the first phase of analysis with an examination of how clients attempt to solicit service modifications.

Publications

Ekberg, S. & LeCouteur, A. (in submission) ‘Doing blaming in talk about sex and rape: Practical contradictions of men as agents and women as blameworthy’, Feminism & Psychology.

Guscia, R., Ekberg, S., Harries, J., Kirby, N. (2006) ‘Measurement of environmental constructs in disability assessment instruments’, Journal of Policy and Practice in Intellectual Disabilities, 3(3): 173-180.