The Digital Societies Research Group draws together expertise from across the Faculty of Social Sciences and Law, and engages widely with a broader range of expertise from across the University of Bristol.

Dr Jessica Ogden (Lead)

School of Sociology, Politics And International Studies

Research expertise: Data politics and critical approaches to data and informatics, Science & Technology Studies, web archives and data work, cyber cultures and digital activism, digital methods and their implications for scholarship, ethnographic methods

Anna Davey-Mitchell

School of sociology, Politics and International Studies

Research expertise: gender; power; politics; innovation; AI robotics for social good; regulation of AI robotics; humanoid AI; transhumanism; simulated womanhood; aggressive commercialisation; commercialisation of AI robotics; AI robotics in popular culture and imaginaries. Further specialisms: innovation training; innovation funding; research and development; academic-business relationships.

Dr Kit Opie

Department of ANTHROPOLOGY AND Archaeology, Faculty of Arts

Research expertise: evolutionary anthropology, use of theory and methods from evolutionary biology to investigate the major transitions in the way information is stored and transmitted and how they impact society.

Prof Emmanouil Tranos

School of Geographical Sciences

Research expertise: spatiality of the digital economy, the economic impacts  of digital infrastructure on cities and regions; using big data to better understand the complexities of cities and urban systems. Recently, his research explores the geography of the creation of online content and its interrelation with cities and the spatial structure using web data and digital archives.

Dr Rutvica Andrijasevic

university of bristol business school

Research interests: ‘platformisation of migration’ and how technology-centered business models drive labour mobility and migration; worker rights in electronics supply chains; digital Taylorism; gender, time & digital technologies.

Dr Ed Atkins

School of Geographical Sciences

Research expertise: the energy demands of cryptocurrencies and wider digital technologies, and how such demands interact with local communities and policy regimes.

Matt Bassett

school of sociology, politics and international studies

Research interests: the relationship between online platforms and gender identification; online discourse; social media.

Uygar Baspehlivan

school of sociology, politics and international studies

My research broadly covers topics of online far-right extremism, digital popular cultures, online humour, social media politics and theories of digital society in general. Its specific focus is the politics of the Alt-Right movement and the gendered and raced dimensions of their digital existence. 

Prof Jonathan Beaverstock

university of bristol business school

Research expertise: Tech in next generation financial and professional services; fintech ecosystems and clusters; fintech for inclusive growth and city-regional development; transnational professional work; digital technology and sustainable business travel; and, the future of knowledge-intensive work.

Dr Roberta Bernardi

School of Economics, Finance and Management

Research interests: digital technologies in healthcare – identities, sociomateriality and the role of epistemologies in patient care.

Prof William Browne

School of Education

Research interests: statistical methodology and software development, applied to substantive problems in education, crime, ecology, animal behaviour and epidemiology; automating statistical teaching and analysis.

Kate Byron

School of Sociology, Politics and international Studies

Research expertise: everyday material-discursive practices of machine learning and AI; ethnographies of digital practices; machine learning and knowledge production; science and technology studies; gender and technology.

Prof Rebecca Coleman

School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies

Research interests: the everyday life of digital media; time and temporality, especially futures and presents; the body, affect and new materialisms; feminist and cultural theory; interdisciplinary methodologies.

Prof Sharon Collard

School of Geographical Sciences

Research interests: understanding how how technology and innovation can help address 'wicked problems' in personal finance such as financial exclusion, problem debt, and the unfair treatment of customers in vulnerable situations.

Prof Esther Dermott

School for Policy Studies

Research interests: digital methodologies for researching time and co-presence in the ‘private sphere’; digital potentials for reconfiguration of intimacy and family practices.

Dr Andrés Domínguez

Department of computer science, FACULTY OF ENGINEERING

Research expertise: responsibility and ethics in data-driven innovation; qualitative studies of digital infrastructure, pervasive sensing, open source and decentralisation initiatives; anticipatory and collaborative methods between social sciences, design, data science, computer science and engineering.

Dr John Downer

School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies

Research expertise: the governmentality of safety-critical technologies and infrastructures. I explore the processes and logics through which states manage the potential dangers of complex systems; highlighting their hidden assumptions and implicit politics.

Dr Kevin Ducbao Tran

school of ECONOMICS

Research interests: Empirical industrial organisation, behavioural economics, digital economics, in particular the sharing economy and online platforms.

Maria Espinoza

School of Geographical Sciences & Department of Sociology, Rutgers University

Research interests: environmental risk communication, digital technologies for climate action and health, the medicalization of public health, science and technology studies.

Dr Maria Fannin

School of Geographical Sciences

Research interests: feminist theoretical approaches to health and new medical technologies

Prof Keri Facer

School of Education

Research expertise: socio-technical change and new approaches to education and learning; democratising futures narratives; Anticipation Studies; Futures Studies.

Dr Claudia Firth

University of Bristol Business School

Research expertise: creative economies and technology; histories of technology and modes of organising, the solidarity economy, democratic practices and alternative organisational models; peer-to-peer technologies.

Prof Colin Gavaghan

UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL LAW SCHOOL

Research expertise: law and emerging technologies'; technology regulation; artificial intelligence and robotics; internet regulation.

Prof Sarah Green

University of Bristol Law School

Research expertise: the legal implications of distributed ledger technology, virtual currencies and intangible property, including negligence, property, contractual and criminal issues. 

Dr Lyndsay Grant

School of Education

Research expertise: Critical approaches to data, algorithms and artificial intelligence in education, political economy of educational technology, digital and participatory cultures, digital literacies, posthuman and sociomaterial theoretical research methods.

Dr Marisela Gutierrez Lopez

School of Sociology, Politics and international Studies

Research expertise: digital technologies in the workplace, participatory and creative methodologies, data-driven futures, interdisciplinary research

Prof Susan Halford

School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies

Research interests:  sociotechnical approaches to digital data and infrastructures; civic applications for digital data and methods e.g. AI for social good; speculative sociology.

Prof Robin Holt

University of Bristol Business School

Research expertise: Technologically mediated decision making and organizational design; organizational formation; topographies and topologies of organizational forms; craft production; new venture formation and severance; philosophy of technology; art and organization; strategy, space and global reach.

Dr Ed King

School of Modern Languages, faculty of arts

Research expertise: book cultures in digital media ecologies; digital social inclusion, with a particular focus on Latin America; critical posthumanism and science fiction.

Dr Yin Harn Lee

university of bristol law school

Research expertise: contract law and copyright; gaming and intellectual property

Dr Jo Haynes

School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies

Research expertise: sociological approaches to the digital production and consumption of music.

Yllka Hysaj

university of bristol business school

Research interests: Financial Technology (FinTech) and the labour market, the competitiveness of Fintech talent and highly skilled workers, locally or at the global level.

Dr Kuba Jablonowski

School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies

Research expertise: digital transformations of border and identity management systems in the context of public administration and governance reforms; bordering, surveillance, and documentation practices enacted by institutional actors; information disclosure and socio-political contestation of bordering and surveillance.

Dr Natalie Jester

University of Gloucestershire / School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies

Research expertise: international security, states, gender, militaries, weapons and digital media (especially social media). 

Dr Zheng Liu

university of bristol business school

Research expertise: cultural sociology, economic sociology, sociology of cultural production (focusing on the book industry), digital innovation, the digital economy, the political economy of AI 

Prof Genevieve Liveley

Department of Classics & Ancient History, faculty of arts

Research expertise:  narratives and narrative theories (both ancient and modern), chaos theory, cyborgs, AI; how ancient myth might help us to better anticipate the future. 

Prof Julie MacLeavy

School of Geographical Sciences

Research expertise: economic geographer interested in both productive and reproductive labour. Particularly interested in what ways, and with what effects, processes of race, gender, sexuality and (dis)ability are being embedded in the social organisation of work in the digital age.

Prof Helen Manchester

School of Education

Research expertise: materialist and STS approaches to urban futures, digital cultures and learning; design sociology; co-design of creative digital technologies for digital social inclusion.

Prof Alex Marsh

School for Policy Studies

Research expertise: digital technologies, cities, housing organisations and housing markets; specifically citizen orientated smart innovation in Mexico; the role of digital technology landlord/tenant relations; changing data availability/use and organisational governance.

 Dr Jacopo Martire

University of Bristol Law School

Research expertise: the legal, political and social implications of connected and automated driving

Prof Morag McDermont

University of bristol law school

Research expertise: connecting community expertise into research and practice to develop collaborative governance with social justice at the centre

Dr Ola Michalec

department of computer science, FACULTY OF ENGINEERING

Research expertise: policy and politics: co-production of public services, policy design, discourses and power, urban and environmental policies; STS: meta-research, epistemology, smart cities (+critiques); partnership building: in-depth and collaborative approaches (action research, ethnography), researching with practitioners      

Dr Sanja Milivojevic

School for policy studies

Research interests: borders and mobility; technology and offending; technology and victimisation; AI and frontier technologies in border control; social media; sexting; online victimisation and violence against women

Dr Naomi Millner

School of Geographical Sciences

Research interests: the political ecology of conservation; implementation of new monitoring technologies - especially drones in forest conservation in Latin America; opportunities for democratisation of knowledge-making about natural environments; the potentials for new kinds of surveillance and incursions on rural peoples' rights

Dr Sveta Milyaeva

School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies

Research expertise: the data economy, the monetisation of and markets for online personal data, algorithmic methods, privacy, trust, surveillance; GDPR.

Dr Julian Molina

School for policy studies

Research expertise: data practices, infrastructures and logistics; the history of crime and justice data; the politics of evidence-based policymaking and data-driven decision making within government; ethnographies of administrative knowledge production.

Dr Devika Narayan

university of bristol business school

Research expertise: the emergence, proliferation, and effect of new technologies vis-a-vis firms and their workforces. I draw from the sociology of work and organizations, economic geography, and computing history.

Ben Newport

School of Geographical Sciences

Research interests: drones; sustainable futures, tropical reforestation; political ecology.

Prof Daniel Neyland

university of bristol business school

Research expertise: issues of governance, accountability and ethics in forms of science, technology and organization; ethnomethodology, science and technology studies and ethnographic approaches.

Giulia Occhini

School of Geographical Sciences; Alan Turing Institute

Research expertise: linguistics, digital economy, natural language processing, quantitative methods, intersectional approaches to digital inequalities

Alison Oldfield

School of Education

Research expertise: innovative technologies in classrooms e.g. re-shaping assessment, practices of co-designing digital technologies with children; participatory, creative and socio-material methodologies. 

Prof Richard Owen

university of bristol business school

Research interests: analysing and engaging with techno-visionary futures, public participation, responsible innovation & innovation governance; Science and Technology Studies.

Prof Martin Parker

university of bristol business school

Research expertise: AI for future society; speculative social theory; organizations and utopia; science fiction imaginaries; philosophy of mind and computational aspects of AI.

Dr Harry Pitts

university of exeter (Politics)

Research expertise: futures of work and economic life; alternative forms of organization; freelance work, self-employment; cultural and creative industries; policy responses to automation/the end of work.

Rachel Randall

school of modern languages, faculty of arts

Research expertise: Latin American digital and visual culture, in particular online testimonies shared by paid domestic workers; digital ethnography and multimodal analysis.

Dr Raffaello Rossi

university of bristol business school

Research expertise: digital marketing; marketing & public policy; social media; issues with online gambling advertising; content marketing; big data analytics.

Dr Paulina Ruiz-Cabello

School of Education

Research expertise: Youth digital cultures and learning; everyday digital cultures in school; identities and cultural worlds in digital practices; mobile literacies and mobile communication; participatory and ethnographic methods; sociocultural and practice theory approaches

Paris Selinas

university of bristol business school

Research expertise: Human-Computer Interaction, Interaction Design, Design Fiction, Future Narratives, Sociotechnical Innovation.

Prof Palie Smart

university of bristol business school

Research expertise: digital innovation in products and services; ethical/moral/philosophical implications of new forms of digital data; digital data analytics/sense-making; digital inclusion.

Helen Smith

Bristol  Medical School

Research expertise: the ethical and legal challenges of using artificial intelligence to inform clinical decision making. 

Dr Fiona Spotswood

university of bristol business school

Research expertise: using ideas from theories of practice to understand the configuration of everyday practices for households and how these shape mothers’ physical activity participation. Fiona is involved in a number of projects which have digital technology at their heart, particularly around how online interactions can shape people’s real world engagement with different everyday activities.

Dr Jie Sheng

university of bristol business school

Research experise: big data analytics; data-driven strategies; online social interactions and networks; firm engagement with digital technologies and platforms. 

Senay Sokullu

School of Economics

Research expertise: nonparametric econometric methods and economics of platforms/ digital economics. 

Paul Stevens

SCHOOL OF SOCIOLOGY, POLITICS AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

Research interests: Scholarly communications and infrastructures; metadata work; standards and classifications; mundane objects; science and technology studies.

Dr Lisa Thomas

SCHOOL for policy studies

Research expertise: dance-somatic and improvisation practices; embodiment and technology; participatory performance; VR technology; practice-as-research; interdisciplinary research; feminist and new materialist theories.

Dr Leonidas Tsilipakos

SCHOOL OF SOCIOLOGY, POLITICS AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

Research expertise: Use of digital technologies to address theoretical and methodological problems; mapping of conceptual relations; uses of visualization.

Dr Sheena Vachhani 

university of bristol business school

Research expertise: Materialist and feminist approaches to digital work. Participatory methodologies and co-production; social justice and politics of digital methodologies; natural resource management and creative digital technologies.

Dr Carolina Valladares

School of Education

Research expertise: teachers' pedagogical practices around ICT and the way they are shaped by policy and context. Her MSc at the University of Bristol focused on the development of Intercultural Competence among 11-year-old students from Mexico and Spain via video-calling.

Dr Elspeth Van Veeren

School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies 

Research expertise: the political cultures of technology, including and especially technologies often associated with security, surveillance and secrecy, as well as as an interest in the role of digital technology in relation to knowledge making and unmaking.

Dr Malu Villela

University of Bristol Business School

Research expertise: alternative organisations, community technology, and how digital technologies can foster more egalitarian, inclusive, and sustainable forms of development locally and globally.

Yuhan Wang

School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies

Research interests: the national identity(s) of immigrants, sociology of technology, the material participation of social media technologies in everyday life, digital nationalism and transnationalism, Chinese immigrants in the UK.

Dr Liz Washbrook

School of Education

Research expertise: use of machine learning methods to improve targeting of early interventions; translation of machine learning findings into tools that can be used appropriately by practitioners.

Prof Debbie Watson

School for Policy Studies

Research expertise: exploring narrative identities of children and young people  living in adverse experiences. I have co-designed a phygital memory tool that enables care experienced children to narrate their care journeys and am keen to explore the use of VR and other immersive technologies in enabling stories of everyday lives to be told by participants in embodied ways.

Prof Graeme Were

Department of ANTHROPOLOGY AND ArchAEology, faculty of arts

Research expertise: material culture, museums, and heritage. His research has examined the development and impact of digital heritage technologies, particularly around exploring ways in which digital technologies are transforming traditional knowledge systems in the Pacific.

Dr Peter Winter

School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies

Research expertise: Science and Technology Studies (STS); the analysis of sociotechnical systems involving Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications, with a particular interest on healthcare and how these systems are developed and implemented; regulation of autonomous systems; responsible research and innovation (RRI); video methods in qualitative research.

Dr Alex J. Wood

university of bristol business school

Research expertise: Digital technologies, work and employment; economic sociology and employment relations; algorithmic management, precarious work and the gig economy.

Dr Juan Zhang

Department of ANTHROPOLOGY AND Archaeology, faculty of arts

Research expertise: ethnography on the future of work, Uber, gig work, flexible labour, migration and mobilities, gender class and technology.

Dr Xiaochun Zhang

School of Modern languages, faculty of arts

Research interests: audiovisual translation and media accessibility (subtitling, subtitling for deaf and hard of hearing, dubbing, and audio description); video games (video game localisation, accessibility, and game streaming); participatory culture and fan translation; human interaction with language technology (computer-assisted translation, machine translation, speech to text technology).