John is a research fellow focusing on the digital and creative economy. He is interested in the interface of economics, digital technology and data.

Particularly in the domains of creative activity and places, and in the use of social media and web scraped data.

Past projects have included mapping the geography of employment in the UK’s creative and high-tech economies, using Twitter data and social network analysis to assess the impact of networking events, analysing Meetup data to identify activities in the UK at the intersection of technology and art, using geo-tagged Flickr photographic data to understand people’s engagement with historic buildings in London, reconstructing the social networks of an online art gallery, and building an interactive map of museum access.

He has also written on topics in the data economy such as open data, markets for personal data, the value of personal data and consumer choice, and on the effects of digital technology in higher education, manufacturing, democracy, art and fashion.

John is on the Intellectual Property Office’s research advisory committee and served on the steering group of the British Academy’s Where we live now project into place based policymaking.