I’m Liv Owens, a sociologist studying how digital systems change the way we understand ourselves, relate to one another, and experience everyday life.
My research explores what happens when ordinary experiences become sites of data extraction. From school apps and health technologies to social media platforms and local government infrastructure, I examine how datafication turns everyday life into information that can be monitored, categorised, and acted upon.
My current PhD at City St George’s, University of London investigates how these processes reshape family life and how community-based, critical digital literacy can strengthen people’s capacity to understand, question, and resist data extraction.
I believe surveillance is not only something to study but something to make visible. My work brings together participatory research, creative practice, and public engagement to help communities understand the systems that shape their lives. Working with residents, local authorities, and community organisations, I develop workshops, educational resources, and policy recommendations that translate research into practical action.
Education is central to my work. Before beginning my PhD, I taught in schools and community centre settings, and I now teach sociology to first years at my institution. Across all of these spaces, I use facilitation as a way to foster critical thinking, collective learning, and confidence in navigating digital society.
Creative practice is at the heart of my methodology. I use crafts, collaborative making, drawing, collage, poetry, and zine-making as research methods that invite people to think critically about digital life together. These approaches help make abstract systems of surveillance tangible while recognising participants as experts in their own everyday experiences. For me, creativity isn’t simply a way of communicating research, it’s the way of producing knowledge collectively.
Outside academia, I run a local craft club and a community poetry group, and I see these practices as deeply connected to my research. Both are rooted in the belief that making things together creates opportunities for reflection, solidarity, and collective imagination.
At the centre of everything I do is a commitment to participatory, public-facing sociology. I want my research to be useful to the people and communities who shape it, and to contribute to more democratic conversations about surveillance, technology, and data justice.