About me

Ben Williamson is a Chancellor’s Fellow at the Centre for Research in Digital Education and the Edinburgh Futures Institute at the University of Edinburgh. His research traces the connections between educational policy, digital technologies, and practices in schools and universities. He is the author of Big Data in Education: The digital future of learning, policy and practice (Sage, 2017) and over 30 research articles and chapters. Recent research topics include data analytics and algorithmic decision-making in education policy, coding in schools, behavioural apps and ‘social-emotional learning’ measurement, and the development of performance metrics in the schools and HE sectors. He is especially interested in examining how digital technologies and data are brought into education policy and practice through the involvement of policy networks of government agencies, think tanks, consultancies, policy labs and software companies. His current projects focus on ‘intimate data’ generated from students’ bodies through wearable biometrics, educational genomics, and neurotechnologies, and on the ‘data infrastructures of higher education’ that are required for performance measurement of universities. On Twitter he is @BenPatrickWill, or you can contact Ben via https://www.de.ed.ac.uk/people/dr-ben-williamson