New job: Chief Scientific Adviser at DCMS

I am delighted to have joined the UK Government’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport as Chief Scientific Adviser.

This is a significant senior role at the heart of government, supporting the department’s use of science, research, evidence and innovation across its broad portfolio: culture, media, creative industries, sport, tourism, civil society, and digital technologies. These are sectors that matter deeply to the UK’s economy, communities, public life and international influence.

This role brings together many of my long-standing interests across academic research, public policy and civic life. Alongside this, I will continue to maintain a fractional professorial role at Swansea University. Much of my work in Wales over recent years — including on digital policy, education reform, infrastructure, skills, innovation and public service — has focused on connecting research expertise with practical policy challenges; this new role provides an exciting opportunity to do that at UK Government level.

My academic work increasingly sits at the interface of computer science, digital policy, education, culture and society: how digital, data-driven and computational technologies shape institutions, citizens, public services and the economy. DCMS is a particularly interesting department through which to address many of these questions, especially given its responsibilities for sectors that are central to how people live, work, create, participate and belong.

I am grateful to colleagues and collaborators across academia, government, industry and civic institutions who have shaped my thinking and supported this work over many years. I am looking forward to contributing to DCMS’s work across such a distinctive and important set of policy areas.