Reconstructing the 'story of you' is a theme that came out of my doctoral research and that I hope to develop in future academic work.

As our personal stories are increasingly constructed through bio-informational, data-driven and algorithmic categories of identity found in our personal metadata and the digital traces we generate through everyday activities - from our internet search histories, to self-quantification technologies and wearable devices - these forms of biodata begin to reconstruct the boundaries and practices of self and society.  Giving account of our lives and conditions increasingly involves accounting for the these digital incursions and transformations through emerging practices of 'informational self-determination' and creative redeployment. 

Computer security researcher, and Wikileaks supporter Jacob Applebaum has publicly argued in recent years that "metadata in aggregate is content.  It tells a story about you".  When we think about this extraordinary claim, this has significant implications beyond questions of privacy or security; it dramatically transforms how we think about what constitutes 'content', 'story' and 'identity' in a post-Snowden, post-privacy, post-social media world.   This involves accounting for the ways in which 'narrative identity' and notions of the subject is no longer constituted biographically or biologically, but bio-informatically.

As part of this broader project, I'm currently also developing a piece of creative research that will be based on people's de-identified Google search histories, to extract, map and re-imagine the many possible stories that emerge from our data trails.  If you are interested in participating, get in touch with me through my contact page.

The architectures, aesthetics and practices of social media: This research considers the relationship between street art, graffiti and digital technologies, in particular the ways in which the production and consumption of forms of street art and graffiti are increasingly shaped by the architecture and uses of the digital platform Instagram.  An article on this with Dr Lachlan MacDowall is forthcoming in Media, Culture & Society