Jay Lemke is Professor in the graduate school of education at the University of Michigan. His research interests include sociocultural theory, new learning technologies, critical multimedia literacy, methods of discourse and multimedia analysis, and education in science and mathematics.
Professor Lemke was the founding executive officer of the Ph.D. program in Urban Education at the City University of New York. He is co-editor of the new journal Critical Discourse Studies (Routledge) and was for the past ten years co-editor of Linguistics and Education (Elsevier). He serves on the editorial boards of several major academic journals including Visual Communication and Functions of Language and is a regular reviewer for several others, including Journal of the Learning Sciences and Cognition and Instruction. He frequently reviews funded research proposals for the National Science Foundation, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Canada), the Economics and Social Research Council (U.K.), the Australian Research Grants Council, and other foundations and national agencies.
Jay Lemke is the author of Talking Science: Language, Learning, and Values (1990), a pioneering and frequently cited study of the role of language in science education, and Textual Politics: Discourse and Social Dynamics (1995), which examines the role of language and semiotic resources in the politics of personal identity and social change. He is the author of nearly one hundred published scholarly studies in the fields of education, linguistics, multimedia semiotics, sociocultural theory, and new information technologies. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in theoretical physics before taking up an interest in scientific and technical education.
Professor Lemke has been an invited lecturer at more than 40 universities in North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia and presenter or plenary speaker for more than 70 national or international scholarly conferences and congresses. He has been a consultant or advisor on matters of personnel and policy for numerous research institutions including Los Alamos National Laboratory, the University of California (Berkeley, San Diego, Davis), the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Toronto, and the University of Sydney, and external examiner for doctoral dissertations at several major universities in Canada and Australia.
Jay Lemke’s current research interests center on understanding how new interactive multimedia technologies can support learning and contribute to cultural and social change. He is focusing attention on interactive computer games, educational software design, and how students make meaning with new technologies in and out of school.
Representative Publications:
“Travels in Hypermodality.” Visual Communication 1(3): 299-325. 2002.
“Language development and identity: multiple timescales in the social ecology of learning.” In C. Kramsch, Ed. Language Acquisition and Language Socialization. London: Continuum. pp. 68 – 87. 2002.
“Discursive technologies and the social organization of meaning.” Folia Linguistica 35 (1-2): 79 -96. 2002.
“Multimedia genres for science education and scientific literacy.” In M. Schleppegrell & M.C. Colombi, Eds. Developing Advanced Literacy in First and Second Languages. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. pp. 21-44. 2002.
“Becoming the Village: Education across Lives” In G. Wells and G. Claxton, Eds. Learning for Life in the 2ist Century: Sociocultural Perspectives on The Future of Education. London: Blackwell. 2002.
"Analysing Verbal Data: Principles, Methods, and Problems" in K. Tobin & B. Fraser, (Eds). International Handbook of Science Education. Kluwer Academic. (pp. 1175-1189). 1998.
"Metamedia Literacy: Transforming Meanings And Media" In D. Reinking, L. Labbo, M. McKenna, & R. Kiefer (Eds.), Literacy for the 21st Century: Technological Transformation in a post-typographic world. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. pp.283-301. 1998.
"Cognition, Context, and Learning: A Social Semiotic Perspective" in D. Kirshner and A. Whitson, Eds., Situated Cognition: Social, Semiotic, and Psychological Perspectives. (pp. 37-55). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. 1997.
"Hypermedia and Higher Education" in T.M. Harrison and T.D. Stephen, Eds. Computer Networking and Scholarship in the 21st Century University. Albany: SUNY Press. 1995. pp.215-232.
Textual Politics: Discourse and Social Dynamics. London: Taylor & Francis. 1995.
Talking Science: Language, Learning, and Values. Norwood, NJ: Ablex/Elsevier