I am a computer science/information science scholar with a focus on human-computer interaction (HCI) and interpersonal violence. My goal is to contribute a wider evidence base on how digital technologies can exacerbate existing and create entirely novel forms of violence and abuse against at-risk and marginalised populations. I aspire to create new technological services and approaches that can seek to mitigate the impacts of harm while providing caring and supportive mechanisms to those who require it.
I prefer to use qualitative approaches such as in-depth interviews, design workshops and ethnographies to try to better understand people’s unique lifeworlds, with a special interest in the power of narrative to shape and inform technology design. I roughly group my research into three thematic categories: digital rehabilitation, capturing abuse with/by data, and justice in design.
Digital rehabilitation.
For my doctoral studies, I explored how digital technologies can provide ways to facilitate educational approaches for pathways to non-violence for perpetrators of intimate partner violence. In these works, I demonstrate that digital technologies can be ongoing sites of renegotiation around both justifying and challenging the use of violent and abusive behaviours. My research sites included working in domestic violence perpetrator programmes (DVPPs) in the United Kingdom and batterers intervention programmes (BIPs) in the United States, but this has also recently extended to exploring online communities of (potential) perpetrators.
Sample works
Mechanisms of Moral Responsibility: Rethinking Technologies for Domestic Violence Prevention Work
Capturing abuse with/by data.
I am interested in how digital systems can be designed to capture and use data on topic matters that can be hard to talk about, such as personal accounts of abuse. Across the years, I have used a variety of different creative approaches to elicit narrative accounts of discomfort and harm in occupational settings such as workplaces. In doing so, I aspire to find ways in designing systems that make disclosing such accounts less of a burden, and caring approaches to use accounts to re-design policy and practice.
Sample works
Fragments of the Past: Curating Peer Support with Perpetrators of Domestic Violence
“That Really Pushes My Buttons” Designing Bullying and Harassment Training for the Workplace
Justice in design.
The design and deployment of digital technologies are laden with political choice as to whose concerns are included and whose are excluded. Additionally, many criminal justice systems are failing to deliver justice for those who need it most. My research investigates how digital technologies can elicit unique and personalised forms of justice, such as distributive, restorative and intersectional.
Sample works
Feminist HCI: taking stock, moving forward, and engaging community
Crime and/or Punishment: Joining the Dots between Crime, Legality and HCI