Peter Tolmie is the Senior Ethnographic Consultant for the MRL. He was originally a member of the Centre for CSCW at Lancaster University, doing studies of middle management in retail finance. In 2000 he was recruited by Xerox Research Centre Europe and worked at XRCE’s Cambridge laboratory until its closure in 2002. During this time he conducted numerous studies of small business and home settings. In 2002 he moved to XRCE’s sister laboratory at Grenoble in France and became Area Manager of XRCE’s Work Practice Technology group at the beginning of 2005. Here his work focused on a range of topics including consultancy practice and remote service assistance. Since starting work with the MRL in May 2006 his studies have focused primarily upon the use of home networks and evolving infrastructures, though he has also played a part in studies of pervasive gaming, initially as part of the EC project iPerg, but more recently in the context of the Technology Strategy Board and EPSRC supported project Participate. Outside of the social organisation of domestic environments and gameplay Peter also has a long-standing interest in the social ordering of engagements with music. This arises from his background in musical performance and composition.
Peter is currently involved as one of the princial ethnographers for the EPSRC funded Homework project and the ESRC funded project DReSS II as well as continuing with the Participate project until its end later this year. He has also been funded by the MRL Platform Grant for a short sensitising project that seeks to explore the interactions and
boundaries between performance, participation and spectating in social music settings.
A selection of his publications are as follows:
Tolmie, P., Crabtree, A., Rodden, T., and Benford, S. (2008) '"Are you watching this film or what?": Interruption and the Juggling of Cohorts', in Proceedings of CSCW 2008, CSCW San Diego, California, November 2008, New York: ACM
Tolmie, P. and Crabtree, A. (2008) 'Deploying Research Technology in the Home', in Proceedings of CSCW 2008, CSCW San Diego, California, November 2008, New York: ACM
Tolmie, P., Crabtree, A., Rodden, T., Greenhalgh, C., and Benford, S. (2007) ‘Making the Home Network at Home: Digital Housekeeping’, in Proceedings of ECSCW 2007, Limerick, Ireland: Springer
O’Neill, J., Castellani, S., Colombino, T., Grasso, A, Crabtree, A. and Tolmie, P. (2006) ‘The Practical Indispensability of Articulation Work to Immediate and Remote Help-giving’ in Proceedings of CSCW 2006, CSCW Banff, Alberta, Canada, November 4-8, 2006, New York: ACM
O’Neill, J., Castellani, S., Grasso, A., Roulland, F, and Tolmie, P. (2005) 'Representations can be good enough', Proceedings of ECSCW 2005, Paris: Springer
Castellani, S., Grasso, A., O’Neill, J. and Tolmie, P. (2005) Total Cost of Ownership: Issues around Reducing Cost of Support in a Manufacturing Organization Case, in Proceedings of IEEE International workshop on Business transformation: Towards a theory of business agility, Munich, Germany, July 19, 2005.
O'Neill, J., Grasso, A., Castellani, S. and Tolmie, P. (2005) 'Using Real-Life Troubleshooting Interactions to Inform Self-assistance Design', in Proceedings of INTERACT 2005: 377-390
Tolmie, P. O'Neill, J., Castellani, S., and Grasso, A. (2004) Users Solving Technical Troubles With a Remote Expert, in Proceedings of the, Giving Help at a Distance workshop, UbiComp 2004, Nottingham, U.K. , September 2004
Tolmie P. (2004) Book Review of: The social life of avatars: presence and interaction in shared virtual environments, (ed.) R Schroeder, New Media and Society, June 2004
Tolmie, P. and Diggins, T. (2003) The Home of the Distant Present ? What understanding of domestic life is required by smart homes? In Proceedings of 1st UbiNet Workshop. 25-26th September 2003 Imperial College London.
Tolmie, P, Pycock, J, Diggins, T, MacLean A, and Karsenty, A (2003) ‘Towards the Unremarkable Computer: Making Technology at Home in Domestic Routines’, in R. Harper (ed.) Inside the Smart Home, London: Springer-Verlag, pp 183-206
Diggins, T, and Tolmie P (2003) The "adequate" design of ethnographic outputs for practice: some explorations of the characteristics of design resources, in Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, Volume 7, Issue 3-4.
Warbrick, C., Rouncefield, M and Tolmie, P. (2003) 'Youthwork andVulgar Competence', in Proceedings of the IIEMCA 'Orders of Ordinary Action' conference, Manchester 2003
Hughes, J.A., Rouncefield, M. and Tolmie, P. (2002) 'Representing knowledge: instances of management information', in The BritishJournal of Sociology, Volume 53, No. 2, June 2002: 221-238
Colombino, T., Hughes, J.A., Rouncefield, M. and Tolmie P. (2002) Organising Failure: Some Orderly Features of a Dotcom Collapse. – in TeamEthno-Online Issue 1., http://www.teamethno-online.org/
Hughes, J A, Rouncefield, M and Tolmie, P (2002) The Day-to-Day Work of Standardization: A Sceptical Note on the Reliance on IT in a Retail Bank, in Woolgar, S. (ed) Virtual Society? Technology, cyberbole, reality. Oxford. OUP, pp 247-263.
Tolmie, P, Pycock, J, Diggins, T, MacLean A, and Karsenty, A (2002) ‘Unremarkable Computing’, in Conference Proceedings, CHI 2002, Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 2002, Minneapolis, Minnesota, 20-25 April 2002, CHI Letters, Volume No. 4, Issue No. 1, New York: ACM Press, 399-406
Mackenzie, A., Hughes, J., Rouchy, P., Rouncefield, M., Tolmie, P. and Diggins, T. (2002) 'Unpacking the Hacker Ethic', in Proceedings of Studies in Ethnomethodology Conference 2002, Colchester, March 21st-22nd, 2002
Fox, S., Hughes, J., Rouncefield, M. and Tolmie, P. (2002) Meetings And the Accomplishment of Organization, in Proceedings of 'Studies in Ethnomethodology Conference 2002, Colchester, March 21st-22nd, 2002
Colombino, T., Hughes, J., Rouncefield, M. and Tolmie, P. (2001) 'When a Dotcom Bubble Burst: Knowledge Management and Business Failure', in Proceedings of the Annual Operational Research Society Conference, Bath, 4th-6th September, 2001.
Randall, D., Hughes, J., O'Brien, J., Rouncefield, M. and Tolmie, P. (2001) 'Memories Are Made Of This': Explicating Organizational Knowledge and Memory, in European Journal of Information Systems 10,pp 113-121.
Crabtree, A., Rouncefield, M. and Tolmie, P. (2001) 'There's something else missing here: BPR and the requirements process', in Knowledge and Process Management, Volume 8, Issue 3: 164–174
Hughes, J, O’Brien, J, Randall, D, Rouncefield, M and Tolmie, P (2001) 'Some ‘real’ problems of ‘virtual’ organisation', in New Technology, Work and Employment, Volume 16, No. 1, 2001
Hughes, J., O'Brien, J., Randall, D. Rouncefield, M. and Tolmie, P. (2000) 'Virtual organisations, organisational knowledge and the customer: How 'virtual organisations' deal with 'real' customers', in Information Systems Review. Vol 1, 2000 pp43-58. ISSN 1471-6089
Tolmie P., Hughes J. A., Rodden T. and Rouncefield M. (2000). Representing Knowledge, in Edwards J. and Kidd J. (eds) Proceedings of KMAC 2000: The Knowledge Management Conference, Aston, Birmingham. Operational Research Society. pp 116-127.
Tolmie, P, Hughes, J A, Rouncefield, M, Sharrock, W (1999) 'Real' Work in the 'Virtual' Organisation, in Proceedings of the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) conference, San Diego, October 1999
Hughes, J., O’Brien, J., Randall, D., Rouncefield, M. and Tolmie, P. (1999) Virtual Organisations and the Customer: How ‘virtual organisations’ deal with ‘real’ customers, in Information Systems - The Next Generation: Proceedings of the 4th UKAIS Conference, Maidenhead: McGraw Hill, 199-209
Hughes, J.A., O'Brien, J., Randall, D., Rodden, T., Rouncefield, M. and Tolmie, P. (1999) Getting to know the 'customer in the machine'. in Proceedings of the international ACM SIGGROUP conference on supporting group work 1999: 30-39
Randall, D., Hughes, J., O’Brien, J., Rodden, T., Rouncefield, M.,Sommerville I. and Tolmie, P. (1999) Banking on the Old Technology: understanding the organizational context of ‘legacy’ issues, in Communications of the Association for Information Systems, Vol 1,Article 21, June 1999
Tolmie, P, Hughes, J A, Rouncefield, M, Sharrock, W (1999) Working with the Work: Process Modelling in Financial Services, BSA Workplace Studies Symposium, Manchester, May 1999
Tolmie, P, Hughes, J A, Rouncefield, M, Sharrock, W (1998) Managing Relationships - Where the ‘Virtual’ meets the ‘Real’, in Proceedings of EASST ’98, Lisbon, September, 1998
Tolmie, P, Hughes, J A, Rouncefield, M, Sharrock, W (1998) The ‘virtual’ manager?: change and continuity in managerial work, in Proceedings the Work, Employment, and Society Conference, Cambridge; September 1998
Hughes, J.A. O’Brien, J. Rouncefield, M. and Tolmie, P. (1998) Some ‘real’ problems of ‘virtual’ teamwork (1998) in Proceedings of the 1998 Labour Process Conference, Manchester 1998
Randall, D, O’Brien, J, Rouncefield, M, and Tolmie, P (1998) Customers and Co operation, NCR Workshop in Financial Services, Lancaster University, May 1998
Tolmie, P, Hughes J A, O’Brien, J, Rouncefield, M (1998) The Importance of Being Earnest: everyday managerial work in financial services, NCR Workshop in Financial Services, Lancaster University,
May 1998
Shapiro, D., Buscher, M. and Tolmie, P. (1998) Meetings of Minds and Bodies, Proceedings of Cognitive Engineering conference 1998
Contact Information:
Dr Peter Tolmie
Senior Ethnographic Consultant
Mixed reality Laboratory
School of Computer Science & IT
University of Nottingham
Jubilee Campus
Wollaton Road
Nottingham, NG8 1BB
Telephone: +33 677 999690
pdt (at) cs (dot) nott (dot) ac (dot) uk
peter (dot) tolmie (at) googlemail (dot) com