Dr Ben Williamson

Chancellors Fellow

Moray House School of Education and Sport, IECS
University of Edinburgh

Tel: +44 (0)131 651 6176
Email: ben.williamson@ed.ac.uk

Street: Moray House School of Education and Sport, SJ 4.16
City: University of Edinburgh (Holyrood Campus)
Post code: EH8 8AQ

Biography

Background

I am a Chancellor's Fellow at the Centre for Research in Digital Education and the Edinburgh Futures Institute, examining the ways educational futures are made and contested at the intersections of digital technologies, science, finance and data with policy and governance.

My current research focuses on educational futures-making across a number of domains of socio-digital and and data-intensive practice:

The mobilization of biological sciences and socio-digital infrastructures of biometrics, neurotechnologies and bioinformatics as sources of educational knowledge production, policy influence, and practice intervention
Emerging financial practices of speculative investment and market intelligence analysis in education, and how prospective investments and valuations are intended to materialize socio-digital imaginaries in technical development
The construction of large-scale data infrastructures by state agencies, global technology corporations and 'edtech' companies to measure performance in schools and universities as a way of shaping and governing the future of education

I previously published Big Data in Education: The digital future of learning, policy, and practice, and am an editor of the journal Learning, Media and Technology. I maintain the research blog Code Acts in Education, and on Twitter I am @BenPatrickWill.

Teaching & PhD supervision

Open to PhD supervision enquiries?

Yes

Areas of interest for supervision

I welcome enquiries about PhD supervision in the following areas:

Critical social scientific studies of data or metrics in education policy and governance

Education policy studies on digital technologies and/or technology companies

New data-centred sciences in education (e.g. digital psychometrics, biometrics, neuroscience, genetics)

Publications

Re-examining AI, automation and datafication in education (5 pages) 30 Jan 2023 In: Learning, Media and Technology, vol. 48, pp. 1-5
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2023.2167830
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Editorial (E-pub ahead of print)
Reading internationally: If citing is a political practice, who are we reading and who are we citing? (6 pages) 20 Nov 2022 In: Learning, Media and Technology, vol. 47, pp. 407-412
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2022.2140673
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Editorial (Published)
What education problems can technology not address? Which ones does it exacerbate? 25 Apr 2022
Blog post › Other contribution (Published)
Afterword: The future of datafication in education? Clouds, bodies and ethics (7 pages) 25 Mar 2022
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003136842-13
Research output: › Chapter (E-pub ahead of print)
Shifting scales of research on learning, media and technology (8 pages) 15 Nov 2021 In: Learning, Media and Technology, vol. 46, pp. 369-376
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2021.1994418
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Editorial (Published)
The 2023 Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report Concept Note on Technology and Education: A Joint Response from the University of Edinburgh’s Centre for Research in Digital Education and Comparative Education and International Development (CEID) Research Group (9 pages) 24 Oct 2021
Response to GEM 2023 Report Concept Note on Technology and Education › Other contribution (Published)
Centre Report 2021: Centre for Research in Digital Education 1 Jun 2021
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7488/era/crde-001
Research output: › Commissioned report (Published)
Meta-edtech 21 Jan 2021 In: Learning, Media and Technology, vol. 46, pp. 1-5
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2021.1876089
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Editorial (E-pub ahead of print)
Assembling new toolboxes of methods and theories for innovative critical research on educational technology (14 pages) 15 Jan 2021 In: Journal of New Approaches in Educational Research, vol. 10, pp. 1-14
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7821/NAER.2021.1.703
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published)
Education technology seizes a pandemic opening (6 pages) Jan 2021 In: Current History, vol. 120, pp. 15-20
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/curh.2021.120.822.15
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Review article (Published)
Covid-19 controversies and critical research in digital education (11 pages) 2021 In: Learning, Media and Technology, vol. 46, pp. 117-127
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2021.1922437
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Editorial (Published)
Bringing up the bio-datafied child: Scientific and ethical controversies over computational biology in education 15 Sep 2020 In: Ethics and Education
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/17449642.2020.1822631
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (E-pub ahead of print)
Historical threads, missing links, and future directions in AI in education (13 pages) 30 Jul 2020 In: Learning, Media and Technology, vol. 45, pp. 223-235
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2020.1798995
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Editorial (E-pub ahead of print)
Centre Report 2020: Centre for Research in Digital Education (15 pages) 6 Jul 2020
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7488/era/crde-002
Research output: › Commissioned report (Published)
Pandemic politics, pedagogies and practices: Digital technologies and distance education during the coronavirus emergency (8 pages) 21 May 2020 In: Learning, Media and Technology, vol. 45, pp. 107-114
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2020.1761641
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Editorial (E-pub ahead of print)
The datafication of teaching in Higher Education: Critical issues and perspectives 18 May 2020 In: Teaching in Higher Education, vol. 25, pp. 351-365
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2020.1748811
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Editorial (Published)
Making markets through digital platforms: Pearson, edu-business, and the (e)valuation of higher education (17 pages) 11 Mar 2020 In: Critical Studies in Education, pp. 1-17
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/17508487.2020.1737556
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (E-pub ahead of print)
Machine behaviourism: Future visions of ‘learnification’ and ‘datafication’ across humans and digital technologies (15 pages) 2 Jan 2020 In: Learning, Media and Technology, vol. 45, pp. 31-45
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2019.1623251
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published)
The hidden architecture of higher education: Building a big data infrastructure for the ‘smarter university’ (26 pages) Dec 2019 In: International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, vol. 15, pp. 1-26
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s41239-018-0094-1
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published)
Digital policy sociology: Software and science in data-intensive precision education (17 pages) 27 Nov 2019 In: Critical Studies in Education, pp. 1-17
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/17508487.2019.1691030
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (E-pub ahead of print)

View all 68 publications on Research Explorer

This article was published on 9 Dec, 2023