Jennifer Rowsell is Professor of Digital Literacy and Director of Research and Innovation in the School of Education at the University of Sheffield.

She is known as a multimodal ethnographer who conducts arts-based, digital, media and maker-driven research with children, young people, and adults in schools and community spaces like museums, welcome centres, and makerspace labs and pop-up makerspaces.

She has an extensive publication record with 30 authored, edited, and co-authored books, over 40 chapters, over 60 refereed journal articles, and she has given many keynotes and invited addresses. Professor Rowsell is Lead Editor of Reading Research Quarterly and she co-edits the Routledge Expanding Literacies in Education series with Dr. Carmen Media (Indiana University) and Professor Gerald Campano (University of Pennsylvania).

Most recently, her research focus has been on digital literacy as a lived practice, as something that is a part of people’s every day and part of this work promotes criticality and disruption to platforms, AI, and data literacies.

She has a book coming out on the topic entitled, The Comfort of Screens: Literacy in Postdigital Times (Cambridge University Press).

Selected Publications:

Books:
Rowsell, J. (2025). The Comfort of Screens: Literacy in Post-Digital Times. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Pahl, K. & Rowsell, J. with D. Collier, S. Pool, Z. Rasool and T. Trzecak. (2020). Living Literacies: Literacy for Social Change. Boston: MIT Press.

Sakr, M., Rowsell, J. & Sherbine, K. (2023). Postdevelopmental Approaches to Pedagogical Observation in Childhood. London: Bloomsbury.
Lee, C., Bailey, C., Burnett, C., Rowsell, J. (Eds). (2022). Unsettling Literacies: Directions for Literacy Research in Precarious Times. New York: Springer.
McLean, C., & Rowsell, J. (Eds). (2021). Maker Literacies and Maker Identities in the Digital Age: Learning and Playing through Modes and Media. New York: Routledge. 2022 Divergent Award for Excellence in 21stCentury Literacies Research.

Articles in Refereed Journals:

Rowsell, J. A call for disruptive multiliteracies and critical wonder in the age of AI. Pedagogies: An International Journal.December 2025

Kucharczyk, S. Pettersen, K., Rowsell, J. (2025). Play and passion: framing children’s rich moments of responding and making meaning. Qualitative Research Journal.

Colvert, A., Rowsell, J., Buxton, A., Horton, E. (2024). Crystallising Maker Moments: Postdigital Stories across Contexts. Postdigital Science and Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-024-00509-w

Bramley, R. & Rowsell, J. (2024). What Sits, What Sticks: Moving into disruptive co-produced film-making practices in the literacy classroom. The International Journal of Primary, Elementary and Early Years Education. Online First https://doi.org/10.1080/03004279.2024.2357056

Rowsell, J., Keune, A., Buxton, A., & Peppler, K. (2024). Beyond words: Making and mattering into learning to disrupt normative practices. Reading Research Quarterly.Online First https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.533
Rowsell, J. (2024). Affecting photos: Photographs as shared, affective ethnographic spaces. Qualitative Research.Online First https://doi.org/10.1177/14687941241246173

Projects:

2025-2026: Language Deficit or Linguistic Repertoires? Documenting International Students’ GenAI-Led Linguistic Practices.with Dr. Tianyi Wang & Pei Liang

2023-2025: Tykes: Early years digital literacies in the landscape of YouTube Kids – led by Dr. Harry Dyer, University of East Anglia