Dr Jean Burgess is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Federation Fellowship Program, where she works on cultural participation and user-led innovation in new media contexts, focusing particularly on user-created content and vernacular creativity. Her recent work has included a major study of YouTube in collaboration with Joshua Green (Convergence Culture Consortium, MIT), culminating in the book YouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture, to be published by Polity Press in 2009. She has also developed several applied research partnerships with cultural institutions and community-based organizations, focusing on the uses of co-creative media such as digital storytelling for cultural participation, advocacy and engagement.