Summary

I am passionate about using insights from the behavioural neurosciences to design digital technology that is sensitive to human limitations and biases, particularly in relation to attention and self-regulation.

My academic and professional background is highly interdisciplinary, and I try to integrate best practices from many work spheres, such as using tools from large-scale event management to structure academic projects.

My personal interests include backpacking, samatha meditation, dancing (Cuban salsa and swing), surfing, and playing music (often with my concept band the Karaoke Collective).

Academic CV as PDF

Academia

Research positions

year what
2023 — present Research Associate
The Reduce Digital Distraction project, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Oxford
2021 — 2023 Postdoctoral Researcher
Carlsberg Foundation & Dept. of Computer Science, University of Oxford

Education

year what
2016 — 2021 DPhil in Computer Science, University of Oxford
Supervisor: Sir Nigel Shadbolt
Thesis: Examining the effectiveness of design patterns for digital self-control
2012 — 2013 MSc in Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology, University of Oxford
Supervisor: Oliver Curry
Thesis: Fundamental motivations and risk-taking
2011 — 2016 MA in the Study of Religion & Psychology, Aarhus University
Supervisor: Uffe Schjødt
Thesis: Religion as a cultural tool for cognitive control
2007 — 2011 BA in the Study of Religion & Psychology, Aarhus University
Supervisors: Jesper Sørensen and Kristoffer Laigaard Nielbo
Thesis: Priming effects of religious concepts on moral judgment

Awards and honours

year_begin what
2023 Reid Music Prize, for outstanding contributions to the local musical community, Linacre College, University of Oxford
2023 Best Paper Honorable Mention Award for “SwitchTube: A Proof-of-Concept System…”, CHI’23: ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
2020 Winner of the 2020 Oxford Three Minute Thesis competition, Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences Division, University of Oxford
2020 Commendation Certificate for the Reducing Digital Distraction Workshop, MPLS Impact Awards, University of Oxford
2019 Best Talk Award, 2019 Oxford Computer Science Conference, University of Oxford
2019 Best Paper Honorable Mention Award for “Self-Control in Cyberspace…”, CHI’19: ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
2018 Best Paper Award for “Third party tracking…”, WebSci’18: ACM Conference on Web Science, Amsterdam
2017 DOMUS Prize for Outstanding Research Communication, Linacre College, University of Oxford

Major grants and funding

year what
2023 — 2024 EPSRC Impact Acceleration Account, Preparing the Reduce Digital Distraction (ReDD) Workshop for Impact across the UK higher education sector
2021 — 2023 Carlsberg Foundation Visiting Fellowship at University of Oxford, Understanding Personal Digital Self-Control Struggles and Appropriate Interventions
2020 van Houten Fund, The Reducing Digital Distraction (ReDD) Workshop for Oxford University students
Supervisor: Maureen Freed.
2019 — 2020 EPSRC Doctoral Prize, Supporting End-User Autonomy Over Digital Device Use
Supervisor: Nigel Shadbolt. Mentor: Max Van Kleek.

Research dissemination

year_begin what
2018

University of Oxford, Connected Life Conference 2018, Oxford Internet Institute

What the Anti-Distraction Market Tells Us About Digital Technology and Self-Regulation

2018

2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 3rd Symposium on Computing and Mental Health

A Cognitive Design Space for Supporting Self-Regulation of ICT Use

2017

39th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society

“It’s More Fun With My Phone”: A Replication Study of Cell Phone Presence and Task Performance

2017

University of Oxford, Connected Life Conference 2017, Oxford Internet Institute

Ulysses in Cyberspace: Evaluating the Anti-Distraction Market

2017

2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Designing for Curiosity Workshop

Curiosity, ICTs and Attention Management: Evaluating the Emerging Anti-Distraction Market

2014

Central European University, Morality: Evolutionary Origins and Cognitive Mechanisms

Wild Cooperation: Studying Real-World Reciprocity Using Couchsurfing.org

2011

33rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society

Priming Effects of Religious Concepts on Moral Judgment – Between Mean Values and Variation

year_begin what
2023 Canadian magazine Healthy Debate, Interviewed for the article ‘‘Everything is at stake here’: Startups aim to break addictions to social media’
2023 Danish newspaper Jyllandsposten, Interviewed for the article ‘Fem digitale tricks, der hjælper dig med at få styr på dig digitale liv’
2023 Danish newspaper Jyllandsposten, Interviewed for the article ‘Hvorfor kan vi bare ikke lade være med at scrolle på vores mobiltelefon?’
2021 Danish radio program ‘Kortsluttet’ (short-circuited) on P1, Interviewed in the episode ‘Død over digitale distraktioner’ (P1)
2018 Financial Times, BBC, The Times, Business Insider, and more, Our paper “Third Party Tracking in the Mobile Ecosystem” covered in international media

Teaching experience

year what
2023 Instructor, Digital Humanities
Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies’ Summer University in Kathmandu
Gave lecture and hands-on workshop on use of computational methods in hindu studies, to 24 international students.
2021 Instructor, Reproducible research with R Markdown
Oxford|Berlin Summer School on Open Research
25 early career researchers (MSc, PhD, and postdocs). Taught a 2-hour workshop on workflows for reproducible data analysis and paper writing
2020 Teaching assistant, Big Data Analytics
Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford
20 master’s students. Taught the practical part of the class on analysing and visualising non-normally distributed data in R and RStudio
2019 Instructor, Reproducible research with R Markdown
TIER Faculty Development Workshop, St. Anne’s College, University of Oxford
20 staff and faculty from research institutions across Europe. Developed and taught a 2-day master class in reproducible research
2013 Teacher, Introduction to Evolutionary Psychology
Oxbridge International Summer School
10 high school students. Organised and taught a 2-week course with group and individual tutorials
2010 — 2011 Teaching assistant, Philosophy, theory of science, and university history
Dept. for the Study of Religion, Aarhus University
20 undergraduate students. Taught a weekly supplementary seminar to the main lecture series

Service

year what
2016 — present Reviewer
ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), ACM CHI Conference, Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies
2018 — 2020 Steering group member
Transparent Statistics in Human-Computer Interaction
2017 — 2018 President of the Computer Science Graduate Society (CoGS)
Dept. of Computer Science, University of Oxford
2018 Main conference organiser and General Chair
Oxford Computer Science Conference 2018, Dept. of Computer Science, University of Oxford
2016 — 2017 DPhil representative in the Computer Science Graduate Society (CoGS)
Dept. of Computer Science, University of Oxford
2012 — 2016 Executive committee member in the London Evolutionary Research Network (LERN)
London, UK
2008 — 2012 Chairman of the Society for the Study of Religion (RvF)
Dept. for the Study of Religion, Aarhus University

Work

Selected employments

year what
2020 — present Data Scientist and Digital Humanities Consultant
Śākta Traditions, Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, University of Oxford
I provide practical support and consultancy on natural language processing methods for analysis and visualisation of large text corpora, using reproducible workflows in R Markdown.
2019 — 2020 Research Assistant
RoboTIPS: Developing Responsible Robots for the Digital Economy
Developed accident scenarios and investigation processes to inform responsible innovation in social robotics, with researchers at the Dept. of Computer Science in Oxford (lead: Prof. Marina Jirotka), and the Bristol Robotics Facility (lead: Prof. Alan Winfield).
2017 — 2019 Web developer
Dept. of Computer Science, University of Oxford: SOCIAM: The Theory and Practice of Social Machines
Built sociam.org, which archives outputs of a 5.5 year EPSCR research project involving 55+ researchers, 40+ projects, and 400+ publications. Developed from scratch in Drupal 7, assisted by two summer interns. Ongoing maintenance, feature development, and content curation.
2017 — 2019 Bartender
Linacre College, University of Oxford
2013 — 2016 Festival Producer and Manager
Institute of Art and Ideas, London
Generated ideas and wrote programme copy for 250+ panel debates for the internationally renowned philosophy and music festival HowTheLightGetsIn; interviewed (600+) and booked (150+) speakers, including Cory Doctorow, Aubrey de Grey, and Simon Baron-Cohen; led and managed a research team division of two full-time staff plus a music team of three full-time staff.

Professional development

year_begin what
2022 Invited participant to Dagstuhl Seminar on Transparent Quantitative Research as a User Interface Problem, Schloss Dagstuhl, Germany
2018 Invited participant to the Global Dialogue for Happiness, World Government Summit, Dubai
2017 Leading for Impact fellow, 4-month leadership training programme at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford

Technical

Skills

type what
 Programming, data analysis and visualisation in R (tidyverse), Python, and D3.js
 Reproducible research with R Markdown (bookdown, xaringan, pagedown) + LaTeX + HTML
 Web development (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Hugo, blogdown, Jekyll, GitHub Pages, Netlify)

R packages

year what
2019 — present oxforddown, for reproducible thesis writing in R Markdown, formatted with a traditional University of Oxford LaTeX template
2019 — present pagedown-cv, for dynamically generating a curriculum vitae from data held in a spreadsheet into a variety of output formats, using R Markdown and the pagedown R package
2018 — 2020 chi-2021-rmd-template, chi20-papers-rmarkdown, chi-proc-rmd-template & chi-ea-template, for writing reproducible submissions in R Markdown to the ACM CHI conference

Apps

year what
2022 — present MindShield, browser extension hiding distracting UI elements on a range of websites, including YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Google Search in the Safari browser on Mac and iOS
2019 — present HighlightAds for Google Search, browser extension that adds a background color to search results on Google that are ads in the Safari browser on Mac
2019 — present “No Distractions” for YouTube, browser extension that hides distracting UI elements on YouTube in the Safari browser on Mac and iOS
2019 — 2023 “No Distractions” for Twitter, browser extension that hides distracting UI elements on Twitter in the Safari browser on Mac
2021 — 2023 Newsfeed toggle for Facebook, browser extension that hides distracting UI elements on Facebook in the Safari browser on Mac and iOS

Personal

Skills & volunteering

year what
2017 — present Founding Band Member
The Karaoke Collective
Inventor, MC, keyboard player, and drummer; the KC blends the fun of karaoke with the magic of a live band.
2017 — 2019 Computer Science Ambassador
Dept. of Computer Science, University of Oxford
I gave regular talks about my group’s and my personal research to 14-18 year old students from schools in the UK visiting the Dept. of Computer Science
2017 — 2019 Steering committee member, Oxford Scandinavian Society
Co-organiser of ‘sittnings’ (traditional Scandinavian dinner- and drinking parties), movie nights, summer BBQs and more. Webmaster at oxfordscandinavian.com
2017 Head of Entertainment, Linacre College Ball
Planned, contracted, and produced 15+ acts, including a 30-piece swing band, funk orchestra, live karaoke, glitter fairy, space hopper race, treasure hunt and drumming DJ
2013 — 2016 Interview Coach
Oxbridge Interviews, Oxfizz
Provided interview training to 30+ teenagers from families not traditionally going to university wishing to apply to Oxford or Cambridge