About

I work at the intersection of research, policy, and communications on digital (in)equality, data justice, and community technology. I’m interested in creating spaces for diverse forms of knowledge to thrive, so we can build responsible and ethical relationships between technology and society.

I’ve been involved in research and policy around issues of technology and inequality for more than ten years, with experience working with and writing about communities straddling the digital divide in different contexts across the globe. I’m currently the Senior Digital Strategy Officer at Manchester City Council, where I help to coordinate the city’s agenda for a responsible, ethical, community-centred and zero-carbon digital future. (Read more about the strategy here.)

Before joining Manchester City Council, I was a public engagement researcher at the Ada Lovelace Institute, 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. Prior to joining Ada, I held a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Media Law and Policy at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies at the University of Oxford.

My research focuses on digital inequality – how people experiencing digital exclusion subvert systems and technologies that don’t work for them, or innovate to build their own. My recent research has explored alternative ownership models for internet infrastructure and ISPs, such as community-owned and -operated internet networks. I use a range of qualitative methods, including peer research, with the goal of imagining and designing a more just and equitable digital future together.

I have also worked at the forefront of strategic communications and engagement with research, as Director of Communications for the Oxford Human Rights Hub and Communications Lead for the Whose Knowledge? campaign. I’m a self-trained audio and video producer, and I’ve has collaborated on innovative multimedia productions from podcasts to film series with academics, litigators, activists, and public health professionals all over the world. My latest collaborative film project, Queer Rural Connections, was an official selection at the 2022 British Film Institute’s Flare Festival. (More about that over at Cherry Soup).

I hold a B.A. from the College of William and Mary, where I double-majored in Government and Linguistics. And I completed an MPhil and DPhil at the University of Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, where I studied the online and offline impacts of emerging digital politics in Cairo after the 2011 Egyptian revolution.

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

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