Biography

I am researching the skills and awareness needed to make sense of data, charts and graphs - or datavis know-how - something that impacts who gets to participate in our data-driven society. Through action research with community organisations and an ethnography of their data visualisation practices I aim to better understand what these skills and awareness are and how they are acquired within the everyday reality of busy, under-resourced workplaces.

I have been designing data visualisations and infographics, in professional practice, for over ten years. For the last five years I have also been running introductory training for those new to the discipline. However, throughout, I have often wondered what people on the receiving end of data visualisations and infographics actually make of them. This has led to a specific interest in working with people who are increasingly required to engage with data, and its visualisation, in everyday life but find they have little relevant expertise to build on.

The opportunity to research answers to these questions has emerged from the Seeing Data project. My research is one of three PhDs, together forming an ESRC White Rose DTC network, all of which are concerned with how people relate to data through its visualisation, and build on the original Seeing Data research.

My research interests include data visualisation in society and literacy in the 21st century.