An incoming lecturer at the Open University UK (OU), I have studied practice in professional software development for twelve years. Prior to this, I spent14 years gaining professional experience within the U.S., Ireland, and England as a web developer in the media and aviation industries and as a research software engineer. I was awarded a PhD in Computing at the Open University for my interdisciplinary thesis which drew on theory from psychology and safety science to explain how professional developers solve problems in everyday work, expanding the conceptual framework for error in software engineering to include human experience, and establishing a connection between human error and professional growth.
Since completion of my doctorate, I have been a named researcher on three successful bids. In 2020, I completed a post-doctoral appointment at the OU in which I examined security activity in studies conducted with two industry collaborators and in on-line communities. The research has informed policy documents developed by the UK National Cyber Security Centre and led to outreach activities at the British Computer Society. In my current post-doctoral appointment, I co-authored the EPSRC/UKRI funded bid for STRIDE, framing our examination of the relationship between socio-technical resilience and automation in software engineering. On this project, I set research directions in one work package and collaborate with a safety-critical industry partner.
An experienced research software engineer, I have longstanding skill in developing digital editions and virtual research environments to support remote research within multiple humanities disciplines, including the history of science, English literature, and war studies. At King’s College in London 2007-2010, I regularly collaborated with principal investigators and cultural heritage organisations in Europe, the United States, and the UK. As a member of the Fine Rolls of Henry III team, I managed the migration of materials from digital edition to monograph, developing software, assisting with monograph design, and liaising with our publishing partner. On these and in prior projects in the U.S., I regularly coordinated the editorial and technical activities of post-doctoral scholars and software engineers.
I am an active reviewer within the software engineering community, and have recently reviewed for the TSE, ESEM and TOSEM software engineering journals. This year, I was named a distinguished reviewer for the International Conference of Software Engineering (ICSE 2022) and I was recognised as an outstanding reviewer for the Collaborative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering (CHASE) conference in 2021. Also in 2021, I was co-chair of the Software Engineering Research and Industrial Practice (SER&IP) workshop at ICSE, managing the peer-review process, session chairing, and arranging participation of a keynote speaker. A remote worker for nine years, I have excellent interpersonal skills at a distance. In this time, I have shepherded empirical study design within three projects at the Open University and fostered relationships between scholars in software engineering, cybersecurity, psychology and industrial stakeholders.
Current Projects
- Post-doctoral research associate on STRIDE, a project examining the relationship between socio-technical resilience and automation (EP/T017465/1).
- Post-doctoral research associate on Motivating Jenny, a project that has investigated ways to initiate and sustain secure software culture among developers who are not experts in security.
- Named researcher on SAUSE: Secure, adaptive, usable software engineering (EP/R013144/1)
Research interests
Following my training in the theatre arts and time spent as a professional, the research approach I take within software engineering is humanistic, grounded in qualitative methods.
I critically engage with prevalent concepts in software engineering research and trade sources to identify questions and develop interdisciplinary analytic frameworks that permit empirical, naturalistic examination of professional practice. My aim is two-fold:
- To examine software engineering as a form of world-making, in which developers, like other people, define and create significant spaces with one another through their activities, ideas, language and materials.
- To situate findings within frameworks and outputs that illuminate how cooperative, human aspects of software development support engineering practice in the workplace.
Teaching interests
Currently, I am a library study volunteer, supporting Open University students in secure environments who are studying toward an OU degree. These students, working on third-year modules or master’s level coursework, do not have access to the internet or to printed research library material. In this role, I find and suggest readings to support coursework based on requests made by individual students. I have helped students investigating topics in exercise science (E314), art history (AA315), philosophy (A853), international relations (DD313), English and literary criticism (A815, A335), and classics (A864).
As a part of the Motivating Jenny project, I have spent the last two years exploring methods to engage developers in discussion about cultural aspects of security that go beyond technical facts. Drawing on elements of the case study and peer instruction teaching methods, the material has been developed into a toolkit that developers can download and independently use.