Research
How people are represented in data, and what happens when that changes
My research focuses on categorisation, governance, information infrastructure and the movement of information across organisational boundaries.
Organisations know people through data.
How should organisations handle the fact that information about people changes over time?
Explore my researchNames, identifiers, classifications, statuses, relationships and records all contribute to how a person is recognised within a system.
These representations shape decisions, services and opportunities. They determine how organisations understand the people they serve.
But people change. Organisations change too.
My work explores what happens when the ways organisations represent people in data no longer reflect reality, and how information systems can respond to that change.
I'm particularly interested in categorisation, governance, information infrastructure and the movement of information across organisational boundaries.
Research
Information about people is often treated as if it's stable
But it isn't.
People can change their names. Their relationships and circumstances change. Records get updated. Organisations introduce new categories or update the old ones. Laws and policies change what the information means and how it can be used.
A change that might look small can lead to consequences across databases, workflows, reporting, integration and organisational boundaries.
My research looks at how organisations represent people in data, how those representations change over time, and what happens when the data systems around a person don't change with them.
Where I work
Writing
For academic and practitioner audiences
I write for academic and practitioner audiences about people, data and information systems.
My work has covered identity categories, information infrastructure, health equity, boundary objects, governance and the consequences of changing the ways people are represented in organisational systems.
Alongside published research, I use working papers and shorter pieces to develop questions that emerge from research and practice.
Consulting
Alongside my research, I run Wyerworks.
Through Wyerworks, I work with organisations on complex problems involving information systems, person data, governance, information architecture, interoperability and digital infrastructure.
Many of the problems I encounter in practice involve representation and change. Different systems describe the same person differently. Teams disagree about what an attribute means. Information changes but its history still matters. A decision made in one place has consequences somewhere else.
Those problems feed into my research. Research gives me better ways to understand them.
Projects
Research, software and applied information-systems practice
My work spans research, software and applied information-systems practice.
Current projects include work on multi-country humanitarian information systems, the governance of information about people, open-source software for handling attribute change, and research into categorisation and information infrastructure.
The projects are different, but they keep returning to the same problem: how organisations represent people, and what happens when those representations need to change.
About
I'm an information-systems researcher, software engineer and consultant based in Scotland.
I completed my PhD in Information Systems at the University of Oslo and am currently a Visiting Researcher at the University of Edinburgh.
My background spans education, health and humanitarian information systems, software development, data governance and digital infrastructure. Across these settings, I've become particularly interested in the assumptions organisations build into data about people and what happens when reality no longer matches those assumptions.
I also co-founded Grassroots Lab CIC. Its work is separate from my research and consultancy, but it is an important part of what I do.
Get in touch
I'm interested in conversations about how organisations represent people in data, particularly where this involves categorisation, governance, change or information moving between systems.
If you're working on a related research problem, interested in collaborating, or dealing with an information-system problem in practice, I'd be pleased to hear from you. You can email me or use the form.