The ISG is home to a wide range of research focusing on the security, wellbeing, and opportunities for people in digitally-mediated contexts.
Our people and society research include participatory and speculative design, ethnography, the role of (geo)politics, as well as developing collaborative engagements across a wide range of disciplines. We are intrinsically involved at the heart of the UK and international sociotechnical research, publishing at top venues and working closely with numerous stakeholders and organisations to enhance our impact.
Our specialisms
Ethnography Group
Lead: Prof Rikke Jensen
The Ethnography Group at Royal Holloway, University of London was established in September 2022 by researchers in the Information Security Group. Most of us come from academic fields outside information security, including social and cultural anthropology, human and cultural geography, sociology, media and communication studies and critical criminology.
Information security is concerned with securing information – and that which depends on it – from adversaries. Information security is thus a field centrally concerned with conflict, of protecting one interest against the other. Members of the Ethnography Group use ethnographic methods of inquiry to research distinct sites of conflicting interests as a way to understand information security needs and practices held among groups with no institutional representation. This includes research with domestic workers, single-household families on the poverty edge, `data-driven’ policing networks, mobile workforces, protesters, populations in post-conflict contexts, environmental and human-rights activists, to mention a few. Our focus is thus on groups that are under-represented in information security research and concerns the information security needs of people who interact with institutions, while not the institutions themselves.
Information Politics Studio
Lead: Dr Andrew Dwyer
The Information Politics Studio (IPS) is a new ‘studio’ founded in 2025 in the ISG. IPS seeks to creatively examine cyber security through a critical lens, with a particular focus on political economy and geopolitics. Unlike a conventional university laboratory or centre, this studio seeks to have greater flexibility and invites academics and early career researchers with a core interest in critical approaches to join us from other research institutions.
