Dr Powell will be on research sabbtical between 8 December 2017 and 27 September 2018.

Dr Alison Powell is Assistant Professor in the Department of Media and Communications at LSE, where she was inaugural programme director for the MSc Media and Communications (Data and Society). She researches how people’s values influence the way technology is built, and how technological systems in turn change the way we work and live together.

Dr Powell is currently working on a book about technological citizenship and governance in data cities and Internet of Things-enabled ‘sensing cities’ and working on several projects related to citizenship, cities, data and ethics. This work tries to understand the discourses, practices and governance structures that are part of our society’s orientation towards data.

Her past research projects have looked at community wireless networking and its policy impact, digital rights activism in comparative perspective (including Net Neutrality and the opposition to SOPA and ACTA legislation) and the expansion of open source, DIY and hacking culture from software to hardware to open science. She also often delivers lectures on the civic and governance implications of smart cities and Internet of Things technology projects.

Dr Powell is delighted to supervise research students in any of these research areas.

Education 

Dr Powell has a Bachelor’s degree in Canadian Literature, training in Science and Technology Studies and critical theory, and many years of field experience working with technical cultures. Her PhD (2008) is from Concordia University’s Communication Studies Programme. She integrates these different perspectives to investigate the social significance of how we build communication technologies, and to provide concrete recommendations for policy and practice based on my empirical research.

Elsewhere and Otherwise

Dr Powell blogs at http://www.alisonpowell.ca and contributes occasional thoughts on Internet freedom and openness to the LSE Media Policy Project blog. Outside of academia she plays the violin, trains in circus arts, and gets obsessed about her garden.