Raising Digital Living Standards through Empirically Informed Technology Policies and Strategies

Description

The University of Liverpool and BBC R&D are offering a 4-year full-time EPSRC/BBC funded PhD studentship, to start in October 2022. The successful applicant will research the challenge of delivering equitable provision of future media in the context of growing digital inequalities.

Data-centric technologies, including AI, are at the centre of the BBC technology and innovation plan and will transform audiences’ experiences in the future. However, not everyone has equal access, or the same knowledge or capacity to engage and to benefit, and people who are excluded are often already experiencing social, cultural and economic marginalisation. As part of the BBC’s commitment to universality, this PhD will contribute to understanding digital inclusion in a data-driven society. The PhD will undertake research to that can support technology policies and strategies that will address individual’s and household’s ‘digital living standards’. It will sit alongside a set of UK studies led by the University of Liverpool that are exploring ‘Minimum Digital Living Standards’ and digital lived experience.

The student will be supervised by Professor Simeon Yates at the University of Liverpool and Dr Rhianne Jones from BBC R&D (with bases in Salford’s Media City and Central London).

The studentship is part of a wider multidisciplinary cohort of four industrial PhD projects: Designing for All. The student will have the opportunity to conduct research at the BBC, and to collaborate with the other students in the cohort. In addition to PhD fees and a generous enhanced stipend, the studentship also covers travel, research costs and equipment. Information about the Designing For All programme can be found in this BBC R&D blogpost:

The Person

This is a multidisciplinary research challenge, and we are keen to receive applications from people from Sociology, Media & Communications, HCI, Information Studies, Politics or related disciplines or with relevant professional experience, and with interests in one or more of the following:

●      digital media; social and digital inequalities; digital inclusion; data-driven technologies; value-sensitive design; responsive innovation; public service media

●      qualitative methods; co-production; participatory design; deliberative inquiry; speculative design; prototyping.

 The successful applicant should have a first class or high upper second class honours degree and preferably a Masters qualification or comparable professional experience.

A key aim of this cohort-based studentship is to develop future research leaders with experience of working in multidisciplinary teams and across academic and industry contexts. Candidates should expect to learn new, cross-disciplinary skills, including those related to empirical research design, data science/analysis and cutting-edge technology. 

For any enquiries please contact Professor Simeon Yates on: 

To apply for this opportunity, please visit: https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/study/postgraduate-research/how-to-apply/ and click on the 'Ready to apply? Apply online' button, to start your application.