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).
Academia
Research positions
| year | what |
|---|---|
| 2021 — present |
External postdoc, University of Copenhagen Human Centred Computing, Department of Computer Science |
| 2023 — 2024 |
Research Associate, University of Oxford Human Centred Computing, Department of Computer Science |
| 2021 — 2023 |
Carlsberg Foundation Visiting Fellow, University of Oxford Department of Computer Science |
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 |
|---|---|
| 2024 | Early Career Researcher Social Impact Award, 2024 Mathematical, Physical and Life Sciences Impact Awards, University of Oxford |
| 2024 | Best Paper Honorable Mention Award for “Empowering Students to Achieve Their Device Use Goals…”, CHI’24: ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems |
| 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 Reduce 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 Reduce 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 |
|---|---|
| 2024 |
2024 Nordic Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, NordiCHI’24
Digital Self-Control in Danish High Schools: A Pilot Intervention Study |
| 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 dit 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, D3.js, SQL | |
| Reproducible research with Quarto/R Markdown (bookdown, xaringan, pagedown) + LaTeX + HTML/CSS/JS | |
| Web development (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Shiny, React, Hugo, blogdown, GitHub Pages, Netlify, LimeSurvey, form{r}) |
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 |