Research

I have co-led a UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) funded research project examining Scottish local authorities’ data engagement during their initial response to the COVID-19 crisis.The project, supported by Digital Office for Scottish Local Government, focused on arising data needs and uses, gaps related to data infrastructures and capabilities, as well as on emerging collaborations within the public sector/ across sectors. The research provides fifteen recommendations for policy and practice which have informed Scottish local government’s strategic planning related to data access, sharing, and reuse. You can read the research’s impact case-study here and the full report here. The research received media coverage in SmartCitiesWorld and CitiesToday.

I took part in the international collaborative research project on Smart Publics. The project explored the materialisation of smart cities in the UK and the ways in which smart street furniture (e.g. smart benches, InLink kiosks) and the data processes entangled within them fit into existing urban landscapes and governance processes. The project report is available here. 

I also worked on a collaborative research project which examined young disabled people’s experiences of transitions to adulthood in Scotland. In particular, the project looked at a new cash-based transitions funds put in place by the Scottish Government and evaluated its impacts on young people within the broader social constraints and structures of inequalities that they experienced. You can find more about this project here.

My doctoral research in Sociology examined the ways in which young people’s engagement with digital platforms was actively negotiated – and at times resisted – while also being informed by the platforms’ architectures, corporate interests and the neoliberal ideology underpinning them. The research focused in particular on peer monitoring and profile-checking practices routinely conducted on digital platforms and normalised as part of social media interactivity. As part of my MRes project, I also used participatory photo-voice with young people to explore their lived experiences of everyday surveillance.