Neil Pollock, Professor of Innovation and Social Informatics
The University of Edinburgh Business School
Neil is a Professor of Innovation and Social Informatics and Head of the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Group at the University of Edinburgh Business School. He currently works on the topic of 'digital futures' and his research sits at the intersection between Science and Technology Studies, Organisation Studies, and Economic Sociology.
His latest book, How industry analysts shape the digital future (with Robin Williams), examines the shaping of the emerging digital economy. He is currently working on a further book provisionally titled 'Hype cycles of the digital economy'.
He is a senior editor at the journal Information and Organisation and on the editorial board of Accounting, Organisations and Society. He was recently awarded the 2022 James G. March Prize by the European Group of Organization Studies for his co-authored article, 'The biography of an algorithm'.
Liz McFall, Chancellor's Fellow
The University of Edinburgh
Dr Liz McFall is Director of Data Civics and Chancellor's Fellow based in the Edinburgh Futures Institute and Sociology at the University of Edinburgh. She has published extensively on insurance, particularly life and health insurance. Recent research has focused on the emergence of insuretech and data-driven innovations including personalisation and self-tracking. She was recently a member of the General Data Ethics expert panel of the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA).
In 2020 she edited a Special Issue of the journal Big Data and Society focused on data, behaviour, and innovation in insurance. Her books include Markets and the Arts of Attachment (Routledge, 2017), Devising Consumption: cultural economies of insurance, credit and spending (Routledge, 2014) and Advertising: a cultural economy (Sage, 2004). She is founding Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Cultural Economy.
Teea Palo, Lecturer in Marketing and Year 4 Head
The University of Edinburgh Business School
Teea is interested in the work of actors in constructing, organising, and shaping markets, and in particular the devices and practices of such work. Ranging from business models to myths as market organising devices, her work explores ways in which actors narrate, circulate, and share stories of imagined markets, and how such stories are performed and materialised into markets.
In conducting her research, Teea has worked in multiple applied research consortium projects with organisations, mainly from the Information Technology sector, facilitating their business model and service business development. Currently, Teea is working on a number of projects in the field of tourism and culture, and information technology.
Her work has been published in key marketing and organisational studies journals, such as Organization Studies, Journal of Business Research, Industrial Marketing Management, and Consumption Markets and Culture.
Alex Christian
The University of Edinburgh Business School
Alex Christian is a PhD student in the Entrepreneurship and Innovation research group at the University of Edinburgh Business School. He is interested in entrepreneurial and organisational future-making practices within health and social care settings.
Elif Buse Doyuran
The University of Edinburgh
Elif Buse Doyuran is a PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of Edinburgh and a teaching assistant at the Edinburgh Futures Institute. She is an economic sociologist broadly interested in digital platform economies and currently researches the use of behavioural economics and nudging techniques by Big Tech companies and smaller startups in the making and marketing of their products.
She has previously reviewed How to destroy surveillance capitalism in the Journal of Cultural Economy. She holds an MSc in Sociology (Human Rights) from the London School of Economics and a BA in Political Science and International Relations from Bogazici University, Istanbul.
Gemma Milne
The University of Edinburgh
Gemma Milne is a writer and researcher focused on narratives surrounding activism in and political economy of science and technology. She is the author of Smoke and Mirrors: How hype obscures the future and how to see past it, is currently a PhD researcher in Sociology at the University of Edinburgh, and a Research Associate in the Social and Digital Change Group at the University of Glasgow.
She writes for outlets such as the Guardian, WIRED, Forbes, the BBC and others, and is co-host of the Radical Science podcast. Her current research focuses on the political economy and market of corporate futurism.
