About

I’m currently the Senior Digital Strategy Officer at Manchester City Council, working with a small team to implement the city’s ambitious agenda for a responsible, ethical, community-centred and zero-carbon digital future. (Read more about the strategy here.)

Before joining Manchester City Council, I worked at the Ada Lovelace Institute as a Public Engagement Researcher, where my role involved bringing public perspectives and participation into our research on data and AI. I also researched and wrote the 2022 UK Digital Poverty Evidence Review for the Digital Poverty Alliance.

I have a professional research background as an anthropologist, and in my research and policy work, I prioritise learning from and collaborating directly with people who have lived experience of digital inequalities, so we can imagine and design a more just and equitable digital future together. My overarching research interest is in working with people who are closing the digital divide from the bottom up, in their communities.

My research explores the role of “local” in our digital worlds. I look at how local spaces, places, and identities are entangled with digital technologies and datafied systems. The local is a dynamic domain of experimentation, where we can see otherwise invisible impacts of technology, and it’s also a space in which alternative futures can be imagined and tested.

Outside of my policy, research and public engagement work, I also have experience in audio and video production and co-founded the creative collective Cherry Soup.

I completed a DPhil at the University of Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, where I studied online/offline geographies of exclusion in Cairo after the 2011 Egyptian revolution. Before joining the Ada Lovelace Institute, I held a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Media Law and Policy at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies at the University of Oxford, where I studied community-owned and -operated internet networks. I have a B.A. from The College of William and Mary in Government and Linguistics and an MPhil in Modern Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Oxford.

*My website is designed to be a low carbon / low energy demand site.*

Useful links:

Bio/Headshot