I have a first degree in Psychology from the University of London (Goldsmiths College), and a PhD in social psychology from the University of Hertfordshire (on self-esteem and motivation).

 

Immediately after my PhD, I worked at the University of Glamorgan as a lecturer in social psychology (from 1995 until 1999). I then joined the Institute of Educational Technology at the Open University as a lecturer (and then senior lecturer) in ICT and Social Science (from 1999 until 2007).

 

I joined the University of Bath, School of Management in June 2007. I’m part of the Centre for Information Management. I teach on a number of courses, including ‘Privacy, Trust and Security in Information Systems’, ‘e-business’, and ‘e-marketing’.

 

Privacy, Trust and Security issues and the Internet:

 

I have a long standing research interest in the use of the Internet for social interaction, including communication (e.g. self-disclosure processes), deception (recent project supported by the British Academy to study deception across media). Recently, this work has extended to consider the use of avatars in social interaction (with Mina Vasalou at Imperial), and social networking sites (such as Facebook).

 

Research methodology:

I have been researching the use of the Internet to conduct research since 1997. This early work was focussed on the equivalence of online versus paper and pencil methods. It has also included work on the study of privacy using online methods, response rates and personalization in online surveys, and disclosure to surveys. This work has been conducted with various collaborators, including Ulf Reips (Zurich), Tom Buchanan (Westminster) and various commercial survey organizations.

 

I would welcome potential PhD students in any of the above fields, in particular in the domain of privacy, trust, security and e(or m-)commerce.