Yet Another Source for My Political Beat

John W. Higgins has been associated with commercial and non-commercial media for over three decades. His experience includes work in production, management, performance and research; he has served on governing boards for community-based cable television and broadcast radio organizations. The author of several articles exploring community-based media, Higgins has served as a member and president of the board of directors of the San Francisco Community Television Corporation, the non-profit organization managing the city’s and county’s public access cable television facilities and channel from 1999 to 2009. He has been active in U.S. and international organizations practicing, promoting, and studying community-based media.

Dr. Higgins is a communications consultant in San Francisco and adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco. He has developed media facilities and educational programs and taught at colleges and universities in the U.S. and overseas. A former associate professor in communication and media at Menlo College in Atherton, California, he holds a Ph.D. in Communication, an M.A. in Telecommunications, and a B.A. in Communication Arts.

Dr. Higgins’ areas of expertise include community-based media; multi-media production; advanced media technologies and social networking; critical pedagogies; and storytelling and oral history as art and social science.

Another of Higgins’s long-standing interests is storytelling and puppetry. As the creator and director of “Night Vision Puppets” he performed internationally utilizing a one-man, “street theater” approach to performance from 1974 to 2001. In the late 1970s the troupe appeared regularly on local children’s and late night television programs. For three decades the troupe conducted workshops and performed at art museums, universities, and outdoor festivals, including a 1995 performance at the United Nations' 50th anniversary celebration in Nicosia, Cyprus. In 2008 Higgins and the puppets returned to performances on occasion.

Higgins’ interest in narratives led to pursuits in electronic media and academia; it has always been focused on the stories told by people within communities. An outgrowth of this is “digital storytelling,” which fuses individual and group narratives of struggle and transformation, personal reflexivity, ethnographic research, and digital distribution. Digital storytelling is a natural extension of his experiences as a storyteller, street performer, and educator – blended with digital ethnographic methodologies.

Dr. Higgins is the recipient of a Fulbright Scholar grant from the Cyprus Fulbright Commission. He was in Cyprus in Fall 2010, utilizing digital storytelling, oral history . . . and puppetry . . . as methods of peace and community-building between Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities.  He returned to the island for additional projects in 2011 and 2013 with groups across the island, including the US Embassy, the Cyprus Fulbright Commission, United Nations Development Programme-Action for Cooperation and Trust in Cyprus, and the Cyprus Community Media Centre.