Mike Prentice, PhD

MIike Prentice is an anthropologist by training and conducts ethnographic research into South Korean workplace culture. 

He has carried out ethnographic research on the South Korean workplace since 2011. His research has focused on the cultural semiotics of office life. Further he is broadly interested in the way different aspects of office life come to articulate broader problems in society such as hierarchy, fairness, distinction and democracy. In his work, he analyses how things like icons, genres, materialities, and platforms of communication mediate broader ideas and shape the experience of work.

His new research focuses on a digital platform known as Blind. This research explores how versions of organisational life are reconfigured on platforms outside of organisational spaces proper and how such shadow platforms interact with or have an impact on seemingly powerful figures and genres of authority. This includes impact on management as well as public knowledge of and 'overhearing' of corporate-internal stories.