Meet the Team
We are academics with diverse interests. Search the links for details, but we each come from very different backgrounds. Everyday questions do not know disciplinary boundaries, so why should academic ones?
Prof Andrew McStay
Professor of Digital Life at Bangor University, Wales, UK. He publishes widely on multiple issues central to the digital economy: namely, privacy, advertising and the social consequences of emotional Artificial Intelligence (emotional AI). He has advised the UK House of Lords Select Committee on AI (2017-18) and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights on use of emotional AI in public spaces. His current book, Emotional AI: The Rise of Empathic Media, examines the current and likely impact of technologies that make use of data about emotional life.
Prof Peter Mantello
Professor of Media and Cyber-Politics at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University. He researches and publishes widely on the various feedback loops and interplay between big data, popular culture, security and conflict. His monograph, Policing the Future: Technology, Criminality and Law Enforcement in Pre-Crime Society, will be published in September, 2019.
Prof Vian Bakir
Professor in Political Communication & Journalism at Bangor University, Wales, UK. Her research investigates: surveillance of data; the security state and public accountability; and disinformation and deception in journalism. She has recently advised the UK Parliament’s Fake News Inquiry (on disinformation), and the National Union of Journalists (on digital surveillance). Her monographs include: Intelligence Elites and Public Accountability (2018); Torture, Intelligence and Sousveillance in the War on Terror (2016); Sousveillance, Media and Strategic Political Communication: Iraq, USA, UK (2010).
Dr Lachlan Urquhart
Lecturer at University of Edinburgh. His research explores the boundaries of computer science (human-computer interaction), information technology law (mainly privacy & information security), and computer ethics. Urquhart focuses extensively on the technical, socio-legal, sociological, and ethical implications of living with interactive computing (e.g. Ubicomp/Internet of Things, robotics, smart homes & cities, social media etc.)