Susan Halford

Co-Director, Digital Futures Institute

Susan is Professor of Sociology and co-Director of Bristol University’s new Digital Futures Institute, which aims to use social science expertise and methods to analyse and understand digital technology futures in the making and use insights to help shape these futures in a way that is fair, just and prosperous for all.

A Geographer by training and a Sociologist for 30 years, for the past decade Susan has been working closely with Computer Scientists on interdisciplinary research and education.

Susan’s current activities concentrate on the challenges and opportunities of the digital age. Her research focuses digital data, infrastructures and computational methods, exploring their implications for how we describe, analyse and intervene in the social world.

She is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and is currently President of the British Sociological Association.

LISTEN TO SUSAN ON THE HUMAN SHOW

Listen to Susan talk about the fundamental disruptions brought about by digitalisation, and brings forth many insightful examples from her field of work: the making of socio-digital futures. She also explores how covid-19 has exacerbated AI processes.

Susan Halford on Multidisciplinarity and the Making of Socio-Digital Futures