Meghanne Barker is Lecturer in Education, Practice and Society at the UCL Institute of Education and a Visiting Fellow in the Department of Media and Communications at the London School of Economics. She received her PhD in cultural anthropology from the University of Michigan. Prior to arriving at UCL, Barker held posts at London School of Economics and University of Chicago. She is an editor of Semiotic Review.

Barker’s research examines the value of creative practices – including children’s play and performance, puppet theatre, and filmmaking – to postsocialist institutions of Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Her book, Throw Your Voice: Suspended Animations in Kazakhstani Childhood, will be published in August 2024 with Cornell

University Press. Her ongoing research examines the role of filmmaking to community building in the twenty-first century, within the context of the former

Yugoslavia. She has visited Interaction twice as part of this research. She has also conducted participatory research with migrants in London, in partnership with LSE’s Department of Media and Communication and with Haringey Welcome.