Research collaboration
I welcome opportunities to collaborate with researchers, universities, policymakers, and organisations exploring the evolving dynamics of digital participation, digital communities, and future-proofed digital societies.
My work sits at the intersection of digital inclusion, online communities, civic participation, and emerging technologies, with a particular interest in how individuals and communities form meaningful relationships with digital systems.
The questions driving my work
What I am exploring
Through research, observation, and community practice, I explore questions such as:
- How does digital participation actually emerge in online environments?
- What social processes shape digital community formation?
- How can communities become resilient and future-ready in a digital age?
- What governance structures are needed for trustworthy digital systems?
Areas of research interest
Where I focus
Digital participation systems
How individuals enter, navigate, and sustain participation in digital environments, and how those pathways shape wider social inclusion.
Online community formation
How identity, belonging, collaboration, and social connection emerge within digital communities.
Gaming and social digital environments
Multiplayer digital environments as spaces where social learning, digital participation, and community behaviour develop.
Future-proofed digital communities
Applying the Seven Pillars framework to understand the ecosystem required for sustainable, inclusive digital societies.
Ethical digital systems
The design of responsible digital systems, including emerging technologies such as AI and conversational agents.
Place-based digital inclusion
How communities, local partnerships, and lived experience shape effective digital inclusion strategies.
My conceptual work
Frameworks I have developed
My research and writing are grounded in original frameworks that connect theory with practical delivery. Collaborators are welcome to build on, test, or critique any of them.
Multiplayer Online Social Formation Cycle (MOSFC)
My original model of how individuals move from first contact to lasting belonging in digital and multiplayer environments, across five stages.
- Bridge
- Bond
- Self-disclosure
- Meet
- Repeat
The Seven Pillars of Future-Proofed Digital Communities
A framework describing the ecosystem required for sustainable and inclusive digital participation across society.
Explore the 7 Pillars →10 Barriers, 10 Unlocks
A delivery-led framework treating each systemic barrier to digital inclusion as a problem to be unlocked, not just described.
Read the framework →The Stage Index
A practical instrument for measuring digital inclusion maturity for individuals and organisations, with sector benchmarking.
View the Stage Index →Collaboration
Opportunities and partners
Opportunities for collaboration
- Academic research partnerships
- Joint publications or working papers
- Digital participation studies
- Gaming and digital community research
- Community-based digital inclusion research
- Interdisciplinary exploration of digital society
Open to working with
- Universities and research groups
- Doctoral researchers and postgraduate students
- Policy research organisations
- Digital inclusion networks
- Civic technology organisations
- Community-led innovation projects
Research approach
How I work
My work blends conceptual reflection, community practice, digital observation, and systems thinking. I am especially interested in collaborations that connect theory with practice and that help generate useful insights for communities, institutions, and policymakers.
Where relevant, this may include community-based inquiry, virtual ethnographic observation, strategic framework development, and interdisciplinary exploration of emerging digital systems.
Let’s explore a collaboration
If you are working on related themes and would like to explore potential collaboration, I would be pleased to hear from you. Research conversations often begin with a simple exchange of ideas.