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Profile

Research interests:

  • Digital inequalities particularly relative to educational inequalities.
  • Young people’s digital skills and literacies.
  • Filter bubbles, mis/disinformation & conspiracy theories.
  • Digital methodologies including graph databases and ontologies.
  • Social theory; especially Bourdieu, Foucault, and Critical Realism.
  • Children’s safety &  privacy online relative to the Internet of Toys.
  • The sociology of crowd working and freelancing that is mediated by digital platforms.
  • The relationship between AI and education now and in the future.

Huw is a co-convenor of the BSA’s Digital Sociology Study Group which seeks to provide a forum for sociologists who are using digital methods and critically examining digital technology’s impact on society. Because technology doesn’t exist outside of society, Huw is committed to helping to make the sociology of race, gender, and class central to the study of digital technology,

Positions held at the OII

  • Researcher, June 2015 –

Research

Current projects

Past projects

  • Child safety on the Internet: looking beyond ICT actors

    Participants: Dr Vicki Nash, Dr Huw Davies

    This project will map the range of non-ICT companies engaging digitally with children and identify areas where their actions might affect a child’s exposure to online risks such as data theft, adverse online experiences or sexual exploitation.

  • Tackling Digital Inequality Amongst Young People: The Home Internet Access Initiative

    Participants: Professor Rebecca Eynon, Dr Huw C. Davies, Laura Pinkerton

    This participatory research project explores a two year initiative that provides all year 10 students with a laptop and Internet connection if they require one at home in three secondary schools.

  • Transmedia Literacy

    Participants: Professor Rebecca Eynon, Dr Cristobal Cobo, Dr Huw C. Davies, Laura Pinkerton

    The transliteracy project aims to examine how young people use technology to learn outside formal educational settings.

  • Using graph databases to conceptualise social class: a proof of concept study

    Participants: Professor Rebecca Eynon, Dr Huw C. Davies

    This study will critically examine the value of graph databases for the social sciences through a focus on social class.

Journal Publications

Davies, H. C., & Eynon, R. (2018). Is digital upskilling the next generation our ‘pipeline to prosperity’? New Media & Society: 1461444818783102 DOI: 10.1177/1461444818783102

Davies, H.C. (2018) Redefining Filter Bubbles as Socio-Technical Recursion. Sociological Research Online 23(2): 136078041876382 DOI: 10.1177/1360780418763824

Davies, H.C. (2017) Learning to Google: Understanding classed and gendered practices when young people use the Internet for research. New Media & Society 20(8): 146144481773232 DOI: 10.1177/1461444817732326

Davies, H. C., Eynon, R., & Wilkin, S. (2017). Neoliberal gremlins? How a scheme to help disadvantaged young people thrive online fell short of its ambitions. Information, Communication & Society, 20(6), 860–875.

Wilkin S, Davies H & Eynon R (2017) Addressing digital inequalities amongst young people: Conflicting discourses and complex outcomes. Oxford Review of Education, 43(3), 332-347.

Davies, H.C. (2014) Social media and personal relationships: online intimacies and networked friendship. Information, Communication & Society, 17(2), 543-568.

Conference Presentations & Proceedings

Davies H.C., & Eynon R. (2019) Reversing the data gaze in education. European Conference on Information Systems. Stockholm.

Davies H.C. (2019) Data as a commodity v data as tool for social justice
How are they co-existing? Data Justice Week. University of Edinburgh.

Davies H.C., & Eynon R. (2018) Alternative futures? Teenagers’ digital practices, social mobility and schooling. American Educational Researchers Association’s Annual Meeting. New York.

Davies H. C. & Nash V. (2018) What does its (un)ethical approach to children tell us about digital capitalism’s circuits of practice. In WebSci ’18: Proceedings of the 4th Annual ACM Web Science Conference. Amsterdam.

Davies H.C., & Eynon R. (2017) Levelling (the digital) playing field with The Home Access Scheme: a grounded account of the processes of neoliberalisation. The British Sociological Association’s Annual Conference. Manchester.

Davies H.C., & Eynon R. (2016) Levelling (the digital) playing field with The Home Access Scheme: a grounded account of the processes of neoliberalisation. The Association of Internet Researcher’s Annual Conference. Berlin.

Davies H.C., & Eynon R. (2016) Learning to Google: understanding classed and gendered practices when young people use the Internet for research. The British Sociological Association’s Annual Conference. Glasgow.

Davies H.C., (2015) Learning to Google: understanding classed and gendered practices when young people use the Internet for research. European Sociological Association’s Annual Conference, Prague.

Davies, H. C., Halford, S. J., & Gibbins, N. (2012). Digital Natives? Investigating young people’s critical skills in evaluating web based information. In WebSci ’12: Proceedings of the 4th Annual ACM Web Science Conference. Evanston, Illinois.

Book Chapters

Davies, H.C., (2015) How do youth interpret misinformation online: operationalising Bourdieu’s Habitus in The Art of Application: Bourdieu, Habitus and Social Research, Palgrave.

Reports

Nash V., Davies, H.C., Mishkin, A. (2019). Digital Safety in the Era of Connected Cots and Talking Teddies for The Oak Foundation.

V. Lehdonvirta, A. Margaryan, H.C. Davies (2019). Skills formation and skills matching in online platform work: policies and practices for promoting crowdworkers’ continuous learning (CrowdLearn) for The European Centre of Vocational Training.

S. Bhullar, E. Helsper, G. Loudon, R. Linnington, S. Davies, and H.C. Davies (2014). Generation 2000: The Internet and Digital Media Habits of Year 9 Pupils (13 and 14 year olds) in Wales for the Children’s Commissioner for Wales.

Invited Talks

2019 Data as a commodity v data as tool for social justice: how are they co-existing? Data Justice Week. University of Edinburgh

2019 Digital Anthropology, Digital Geography, and Digital Sociology: what are their affinities? Sage Publishing. London.
2018 Why do we research what young people are doing online?
BSA Presidential Event, House of Commons. London

2018 Isn’t it all about structure v agency? Or, thinking through the study of tech with (digital) sociology. University of Gothenburg.

2018 Trust us, we share your values: tentative methods to expose digital capitalism’s strategic use of agnotology. University of Salford.

2018 Democracy: a hackable socio-technical system? University of Swansea.

2017 Radical Digital Citizenship: what is Digital Sociology’s contribution?University of Edinburgh.

2017 The (im)possibility of capturing young people’s socio-technical ecosystems. Brunel University of London.

2017 What We Don’t Want to Know About Teenagers Online. EdTech Winter School. Uruguay.

2017 Diversity v compliance: how do we want young people to use digital technology? Children, Youth and Online Media Summit, Cardiff.

 

Blog

Press

  • Why education is the only antidote to fake news

    19 February 2018 The New Statesman


    Opinion piece by OII's Dr Huw Davies on how education may be the only way to combat disinformation, and what provisions currently exist in England and Wales

  • Five ways politicians can win over young voters

    25 June 2017 BBC News


    Surveillance, misuse of data, privacy and hacking are all issues that Dr Huw Davies of the Oxford Internet Institute believes young voters of the future will be concerned about.