Meet the team
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As we launch our new website about our current Living With Data project, it’s only ‘fair’ that we tell you who we are and what we are doing on the project. We are pleased to be able to introduce you to the project team.
Helen Kennedy is Professor of Digital Society at the University of Sheffield.
Over 20+ years, she has researched how digital developments are experienced by citizens/publics/’ordinary people’ and how these experiences can inform the work of digital media practitioners. She is currently interested in the datafication of everyday life. She is researching public attitudes to data mining and related issues such as trust in data, data and inequality and what ‘good’ data practice might look like. She is also interested in the role of visual representations of data in everyday life. She is working on a number of the projects featured on this website.
Jo Bates is Senior Lecturer in Information Politics and Policy at the University of Sheffield.
Her research is situated in the field of Critical Data Studies – an interdisciplinary field that uses critical social theory approaches to examine the social drivers, implications and power relations of emergent forms of data and algorithmic practices. Jo works collaboratively with other scholars in the field of Critical Data Studies and cognate fields, as well as computer and information scientists who are engaged in the algorithmic processing of data. Jo is a co-founder of the international Data Power conference, and she is on the Editorial Advisory Board of the journal Big Data and Society. She is working on Living With Data.
Todd Hartman is Senior Lecturer in Quantitative Social Science and Director of the Sheffield Q-Step Centre at the Sheffield Methods Institute.
He is a political psychologist with international expertise in survey research and experimental design. His research explores the psychological underpinnings of public opinion and mass political behaviour, and his work has been featured in media outlets such as The Washington Post,The Guardian, The Economist, and Significance Magazine. He currently convenes the Political Psychology Specialist Group for the Political Studies Association and recently completed a 3-year term on the editorial board of PS: Politics and Political Science. He is working on Public trust in data-driven services and data management models and is a member of the Living with Data Advisory Group.
Itzelle Medina-Perea is a PhD student at the University of Sheffield.
She is researching the socio-cultural factors that promote, slow down, or block the movement of specific forms of personal patient data between different social actors within, and beyond, the health care sector in the UK. Through her research she aims to gain understanding of how socio-cultural factors influence the movement of particular types of patient data generated within the UK’s health care sector from their initial creation through to their use for secondary purposes in different contexts. She is working on Living with data.
Susan Oman is Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Sheffield.
Susan researches how data works in context, and in relation to particular policy issues, including well-being, loneliness, inequality and class. Her research is situated in the sociology of knowledge and focuses on the role of knowledge in social change. She seeks to develop practice and policy-relevant understanding through methodologically rigorous projects that work with stakeholders and partners and have practical impact in various ways. She previously worked on Data, diversity and inequality in the creative industries and What constitutes ‘good data’ in the creative economy?. The outcomes of these projects can be found profiled on How data work in context. Susan is now working on Living with data.
Lulu Pinney is a PhD student at the University of Sheffield.
She is researching the skills needed to make sense of data, charts and graphs, one factor that impacts who gets to participate in our data-driven society. Through action research with community organisations and an ethnography of their data visualisation practice, she aims to better understand what these skills are and how they are acquired within the everyday reality of their workplaces. She has been designing data visualisations and infographics and running introductory training for ten years. She has often wondered what people on the receiving end of data visualisations and infographics make of them. This has led to an interest in working with people who are increasingly required to engage with data, and its visualisation, in everyday life, but find they have little relevant expertise to build on. She is working on Living with data.
Robin Steedman is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Creative and Cultural Industries in Africa at Copenhagen Business School.
She is interested in global creative and cultural industries, and in questions of diversity and inequality in media production, distribution, and viewership. Robin is working on Signing in (part of Data, diversity and inequality in the creative industries) and Public trust in data-driven services and data management models (part of What constitutes ‘good data’ in the creative economy?
Mark Taylor is Senior Lecturer in Quantitative Methods at the Sheffield Methods Institute, and AHRC Leadership Fellow (Creative Economy) until 2021.
Mark’s background is in sociology and philosophy, but his research interests are interdisciplinary, across sociology, cultural policy, cultural economy, music, and other fields. His research primarily focuses on understanding the relationship between culture and inequality, broadly-defined, and he has worked with a wide range of partners both within academia and across the cultural sector. He worked on Data, diversity and inequality in the creative industries and What constitutes ‘good data’ in the creative economy? and is working on Living with data.
We will also be announcing our Advisory Group soon, so watch this space!