Please note that advertised projects are sample projects and prospective applicants are not required to apply to one of the advertised projects, but are welcome to discuss broader research interests with the academic named in the advert - and/or to apply with their own research proposal.
The Centre for Doctoral Training in Cyber Security for the Everyday at Royal Holloway University of London seeks to recruit a PhD student to explore how information security manifests at the margins of societies, using ethnographic methods of inquiry.
Grounded in ethnography, this project explores how information security is understood, negotiated, shaped and practised among people living and/or working at the margins of societies. More specifically, it engages the often hidden, unvoiced and/or marginalised groups and communities not generally considered in the design of security technologies. 'The margin' is loosely defined and can be understood in cultural, economic, geographical, occupational, social terms. As such, the PhD can take multiple directions, engaging a diversity of groups, communities and/or specific sites of study.
Ethnography is uniquely placed to uncover information security needs and practices through extended field studies, driven by immersion and observation with and within the groups it aims to understand. It enables long-term explorations of, for example, what security looks and feels like for the groups under study. How security is experienced and voiced and how it is negotiated and shared between group members. How security technologies are used and for what purpose within groups. What security expectations are held within groups and how they manifest themselves as well as the socio-materiality of their existence.
This project complements existing work in the Ethnography Group (https://ethnography.isg.rhul.ac.uk) within the Information Security Group at Royal Holloway. The Ethnography Group was established in September 2022 and comprises researchers with distinct interests in using ethnographic approaches to un-earth information security needs among populations with no institutional representation. Current work by members of the Ethnograpy Group includes exploring how information security is experienced and practised among domestic workers in Nigeria, within single-parent households in Thailand, in post-conflict societies and among activist and protest networks, to name a few.
We seek PhD students to collaborate on, contribute to and extend this body of work. Applicants should thus have an interest in information security but come from a social science background, with at least an undergraduate degree in a field cognate to Anthropology, Human Geography, Sociology or Science and Technology Studies. Ideally, applicants will have experience in conducting ethnographic fieldwork, engaging in participant observation and/or collecting and analysing qualitative data.
Prospective applicants are welcome to discuss with Dr Rikke Bjerg Jensen
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