Which Schools and/or Institutes are you part of?

I'm part of the School of Computer Science & Mathematics.

What is your role within research

As an academic, the research part of my job is quite varied and includes leading our Human-centred computing research theme, supervising PhD students, working on funded and unfunded projects, writing papers and grant applications, contributing to research committees, mentoring colleagues, networking and outreach, reviewing papers and many other things, which means the role is quite varied and variable.

Can you tell us a bit about your role at Keele? What does a typical day look like for you?

My role at Keele as a Professor of Computer Science contains a number of different aspects related to teaching, scholarship, research and citizenship. I am currently the Postgraduate Course Director for Computer Science, I organise and run our Welcome Week for all levels, I lead 3 undergraduate modules, and teach on 3 others, I supervise undergraduate/postgraduate project and PHD students, and contribute to a number of funded and unfunded research projects with colleagues at Keele and at other Universities.

On a typical day, I wake up at 5:30 a.m. and read Google Scholar recommended articles till 6:30 a.m., have a breakfast of oats, blueberries, and peanut butter, then dedicate an hour to paper writing and journaling, before logging into emails ... or that's what I perhaps think I should be doing (or what LinkedIn tells me I should be doing) but for me, there is no typical day and that's what I like most about the role. Luckily, there is still enough flexibility to allow me to plan and control a lot of my work myself. I do tend to start the day with emails though as I am an "Inbox Zero" proponent and that tends to drive any unscheduled time.

What do you enjoy most about your role?

As well as the general freedom in parts of my job, I've realised, particularly after the pandemic, that being with students and colleagues is something that gives me a sense of purpose which is often easy to lose sight of with the competing demands we have in HE. I really value the time spent talking with others about how to solve interesting problems with the niche parts of Computer Science I know about, but also just being with other people and talking about things around the job. It's a cliche but getting to work with interesting, passionate and supportive people, both colleagues and students, is still what makes me want to work at a University.

A recent example of this was at the end of an Undergraduate Project Demonstration this year when we asked a student what they were most proud of in their project, and they said, "That no one else has done what I have done before", and it was a great reminder of why I do still enjoy this job.

What is your background? How did you first get involved in research?

My first degree was originally going to be Law but I changed to Biology at King's College London at the last minute. I wasn't particularly engaged as a student (which showed in the marks I achieved) and I was given some very good advice to go and do an MSc and "all would be forgiven". I chose the conversion MSc I.T. course at Keele which went well, and I ended up starting a part-time PhD at Keele working with my MSc project supervisor on knowledge elicitation techniques (whilst teaching at the same time). Towards the end of the PhD, I decided to move back to London and got a job as a Researcher at City, University of London, which was where I then got to witness, start and be involved with a variety of research projects related to eHealth full-time, in particular social media analytics to detect disease outbreaks, something that I am still doing now.

Please tell us about research projects you are involved with.

The 2 largest projects I am involved with are:

1. In collaboration with Professor Liz Poole from the School of Humanities, we have been looking into anti-muslim hate speech on Twitter since 2016 (funded by the AHRC and British Academy). This has involved collecting millions of tweets and analysing them with techniques from both subject areas, to identify how counter-narratives form and produce guidelines to assist activists. We recently presented the results of this work in the Houses Of Parliament, and are currently writing a book to be released in 2026.

2. In collaborations with colleagues from UHNM, we have been co-developing a clinical guidelines mobile app to be used by clinicians at the bedside. This has involved using a variety of user-centred design techniques to identify how to take information that is currently in a book/pdf form and working out how to present the same information on a mobile device. We've produced a set of design guidelines to help others working in similar areas and hope to launch the app in UHNM soon.