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Security at the Margins

Security at the Margins

This research area is rooted in the social sciences and critical humanities and aims to interrogate and challenge the assumptions of position and power that underpin security technology practice and design. In particular, researchers in the ISG are researching the security of marginalised and under-served communities and groups that often find themselves disempowered, unvoiced and unrepresented by technology design and practice. This research area considers the approaches, notions and strategies of security and insecurity by, for example, refugees and migrants, welfare claimants, prisoners, isolated and disconnected communities as they navigate a digitally mediated everyday. As such, the margins are loosely defined and can be understood in cultural, economic, geographical, occupational, social terms.

This research area employs qualitative research methods, creative research engagements, ground-up research approaches, collective and co-produced research practices in information security, in contrast to quantitative approaches favoured elsewhere, while also being founded upon political and sociological theories of security (see also "Digital Security for All" research area).

  • Rikke Bjerg Jensen, Lizzie Coles-Kemp, Reem Talhouk: When the Civic Turn turns Digital: Designing Safe and Secure Refugee Resettlement. ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2020.
  • Rikke Bjerg Jensen, Lizzie Coles-Kemp, Nicola Wendt, Makayla Lewis: Digital Liminalities: Understanding Isolated Communities on the Edge. ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2020.
  • Reem Talhouk, Lizzie Coles-Kemp, Rikke Bjerg Jensen, Madeline Balaam, Andrew Garbett, Hala Ghattas, Vera Araujo-Soares, Balsam Ahmad, Kyle Montague: Food Aid Technology: The Experience of a Syrian Refugee Community in Coping with Food Insecurity. ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, CSCW 2020: 134.
  • Lizzie Coles-Kemp, Rikke Bjerg Jensen, Reem Talhouk: Accessing a New Land: Designing for a Social Conceptualisation of Access. ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2019: 181.
  • Lizzie Coles-Kemp, Rikke Bjerg Jensen, Reem Talhouk: In a New Land : Mobile Phones, Amplified Pressures and Reduced Capabilities. ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2018: 584.

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