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Meet Our Cybernetic Speakers
We are honoured to welcome an exceptional group of speakers who bring diverse expertise and perspectives to this inaugural Cybernetic Culture Workshop. Each speaker is a thought leader in their field, with deep knowledge and experience in the intersections of technology, society, culture, and security. Their contributions will challenge our thinking and inspire thought-provoking discussions, offering valuable insights into the ways digital landscapes are transforming consumption, security, and society at large.
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In addition, we are privileged to have several distinguished doctoral researchers presenting, further enriching the conversations with fresh, cutting-edge perspectives.
We look forward to the wealth of knowledge our speakers will bring on the day and the impactful conversations that will shape the future of these critical topics.
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Learn more about some of our incredible Cybernetic Speakers shaping the conversation below.
Simon Ardizzone
Emmy Nominated International Documentary Film Maker
Simon Ardizzone is a London-based documentary film maker working in the UK and US. He has made several films about cybersecurity and voting infrastructure, including ‘Hacking Democracy’ (HBO, 2006) and ‘Kill Chain: The Cyber War on America’s Elections' (HBO, 2020). Both films broke new ground in researching the inner workings of voting technology, proving for the first time that not only can votes be flipped but also that foreign hackers had accessed US election servers during a live election. Hacking Democracy and Kill Chain have been distributed globally and both garnered Emmy nominations for Outstanding Investigative Journalism. Simon is a graduate of The National Film and Television School where he studied editing and Durham University where he read theology.
Dr. Partha Das Chowdhury
Lecturer in Software Security
University of Bristol
Dr. Partha Das Chowdhury is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in software security at University of Bristol. He is also a member of core team of the UKRI National Research Centre on Privacy, Harm Reduction and Adversarial Influence Online (REPHRAIN). Partha advocates a realisation based research paradigm to systems and software security. He pursues two distinct yet interrelated research strands. He leads the development of the testbed operating system (testbedOS) to test application security and privacy properties in a reproducible manner. On the other hand he was the first to propose the adoption of Amartya Sen’s Capability Approach for inclusive security engineering. He led the collaborative work with University of Cambridge that uncovered cloning attacks in Signal and WhatsApp desktop clients. Partha was involved in the evaluation of six safety technologies to detect child sexually abusive material (CSAM) commissioned by GCHQ and the Home Office, UK. He has contributed to UK’s Department of Culture Media and Sports consultation on Security and Privacy settings in Apps and Apps stores on behalf of REPHRAIN. The consultation shaped the regulatory content in this space. He has published in Software Practice and Experience journal, IEEE SecDev, ACM New Security Paradigms Workshop, USENIX PePR, Computer Supported Cooperative Work and the International Security Protocols Workshop held annually at Trinity College, Cambridge. He first authored and co-authored two award winning papers at IEEE SecDev and ACM CSCW respectively. He spent more than a decade in the industry, he conceived award winning applications for a national asset Tata Steel Limited.
Professor Niki Panteli
Professor of Digital Business
Lancaster University
Professor Panteli is a professor of digital business at Lancaster University, Department of Management Science. Professor Panteli's research interests lie in the fields of digital transformation, digital platforms and online communities. Within these areas, she has been researching issues on trust, leadership, identity and power dynamics. She also has an interest in the social and organisational aspects of cybersecurity and a long-standing interest in gender dynamics, inclusivity and diversity within the high-tech sector.
Dr. Boineelo Reabetswe Nthubu
Post-Doctoral Research Associate
Lancaster University
Dr. Boineelo Nthubu is a postdoctoral research associate at Lancaster University, Department of Management Science, and a business management lecturer at London College of Contemporary Arts. She has a PhD in Information Systems from Lancaster University. Her research interests concern responsible digital practices. Currently, she is particularly interested in conducting research in the following areas: the role of AI development inclusivity and diversity in mitigating misinformation, responsible AI practices, and digital enablers to improve health pathways.
Haya Sheffer
Artist, Designer, and AHRC-funded Doctoral Researcher
Reading School of Art and Cardiff University
Haya Sheffer is an artist, designer, and AHRC-funded Doctoral Researcher at the Reading School of Art and Cardiff University. With a background in industrial and visual communication design, her research reflects insights gained through sustained practice that has accompanied the evolution of the media revolution from its earliest days. This continuous engagement with technological and cultural transformations has shaped her understanding and critical analysis of how these developments influence and shape the human-technology relationship within the contemporary digital culture. Employing and combining artistic practice and theoretical analysis, she investigates contemporary culture’s personal, social, technological, and political dimensions, addressing themes of power, control, metanarratives, and bias. Her mixed-media research and art projects have received awards and have been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions at art museums worldwide. She has also published academic peer-reviewed papers and presented her research at international conferences. https://hayasheffer.com
Erin Niamh McNally
Doctoral Researcher & Associate Lecturer
Lancaster University
Erin McNally is currently a PhD candidate at Lancaster University in the Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion. Her PhD explores how videogames as an artefact of popular culture play a role in producing, replicating, and modifying discourse on future war.
Her wider research interests explore the intersections of culture, technology, and conflict.
Dr. Petra Audy Martinek
Post-Doctoral Research Fellow
Bournemouth University
Dr. Petra Audy Martinek is a Marie Curie/UKRI Post-Doctoral Researcher at Bournemouth University, specializing in consumer engagement with brands on social media and marketing effectiveness.​ She holds a PhD in Media Communications from Charles University Prague, where she explored the often-overlooked phenomenon of invisible consumer behaviours on social media—how users engage with brand content beyond traditional, publicly visible metrics. As part of this research, she developed Digital Practices Tracing, a novel methodology that enables the exploration of real consumer engagement in digital environments. Based on screencast videography, this approach captures engagement as it unfolds in real life, providing a deeper understanding of consumer interactions beyond likes, comments, and shares.
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Her doctoral work introduced a taxonomy of invisible practices and the concept of invisible engagement—an alternative form of interaction with brand content that is meaningful to consumers but remains hidden from conventional analytics. By shedding light on these subtle yet impactful forms of engagement, her research offers valuable insights into the complexities of digital consumer behaviour. Building on this foundation, her current research examines how digital advertising impacts consumer well-being.
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With a strong interdisciplinary approach, Petra’s work advances both academic theory and industry practice, offering new perspectives on how brands and consumers connect in online spaces.
Mengjun Tao
Doctoral Researcher & Associate Lecturer
Lancaster University
Mengjun Tao is a Ph.D. student at Lancaster University Management School (LUMS), specializing in the societal and market implications of artificial intelligence. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Electronic Information Engineering from Beihang University and a Master’s degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from New York University. Initially admitted to Lancaster University’s School of Computing and Communications for a Ph.D. in AI, he later transitioned to LUMS to focus on the broader economic, social, and ethical dimensions of AI adoption.
With years of experience in AI-driven technological research, Mengjun has contributed to multiple publications, particularly in medical imaging processing and generative image technologies. His technical background has provided him with a profound understanding of AI’s capabilities, limitations, and transformative potential. Recognizing both the opportunities and challenges that AI introduces, his current research examines how AI reshapes markets, impacts stakeholders, and raises critical ethical and legal concerns. He explores how businesses and society can strategically adapt to AI-driven transformations, ensuring responsible and sustainable integration of the technology.
By bridging technical expertise with socio-economic analysis, Mengjun aims to contribute to the ongoing discourse on AI governance, innovation management, and policy frameworks that balance technological advancement with ethical responsibility.
Dr. Quynh Hoang
Lecturer in Marketing
University of Leicester
Dr. Quynh Hoang is a Lecturer in Critical Marketing and Consumer Culture Studies at the University of Leicester College of Business, UK. Her research explores the social and cultural dimensions of consumption, with a particular emphasis on digital overconsumption, consumer resistance, conspicuous consumption, and ethical consumption. She critically examines the broader marketing and consumer landscape, shedding light on its unintended and often ‘darker’ consequences.
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Additionally, her work investigates how neoliberal ideology, individualisation, and marketisation processes influence consumer well-being, social cohesion, and environmental sustainability.
Professor James Fitchett
Professor of Marketing and Consumer Research
University of Leicester
James Fitchett is Professor of Marketing and Consumer Research at the University of Leicester School of Business. His research explores the evolving landscape of marketing theory and consumer culture, focusing on how markets, capital, and consumer identities are shaped by broader social and cultural trajectories. His recent work examines the shifting politics of consumer identity, investigating the complex interplay between marketing practices, ideological structures, and consumer experience. With a keen interest in the transformative role of technology, Professor Fitchett’s research delves into how digital innovation is reshaping consumer behaviour and market structures.
Drawing on critical theory, contemporary philosophy, and social theory, he brings a multidisciplinary perspective to understanding the forces that influence modern consumer culture to challenge conventional wisdom and offering a forward-looking analysis of marketing’s role in society and the future of consumer engagement.
Professor Joe Burton
Professor of International Security
Lancaster University
Joe Burton is Professor of International Security (Security and Protection Science) in the Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion (PPR) at Lancaster University. He joined the university in July 2023 as part of the Security and Protection Science initiative. Prior to that he held permanent positions at the University of Nottingham and the University of St Andrews and was a Marie Curie (MSCA-IF) fellow at Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), working on the two-year European Commission-funded project Strategic Cultures of Cyber Warfare (CYBERCULT). Joe is the author of NATO's Durability in a Post-Cold War World (SUNY Press, 2018), editor of Emerging Technologies and International Security: Machines the State and War (Routledge, 2020), and his work on Artificial Intelligence and Cyber Security has been published in a range of leading scientific journals, including International Affairs, Journal of Global Security Studies, Technology in Society, Asian Security, Defence Studies, the Cyber Defence Review, the RUSI Journal and Political Science. Dr Burton has served as a ministerial advisor in New Zealand and the UK. He is the coordinator of the CYDIPLO Jean Monnet Network on Cyber Diplomacy, a recipient of the US Department of State (DoS) SUSI Fellowship (New York, Washington DC) and the Taiwan Fellowship (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Taipei), and has been a visiting researcher and lecturer at the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (CCDCOE) in Tallinn, Estonia. He is currently the Senior Fellow for Futures Literacy at the Research Institute for Socio-Technical Cyber Security (RISCS).
Yasin Tokat
Doctoral Researcher of Cyber Diplomacy
University of Szeged
Yasin Tokat is a keen Ph.D. researcher at the Faculty of Law and Political Science at the University of Szeged, Hungary. His academic research focuses on the emerging field of cyber diplomacy, which has begun to attain a pivotal role in resolving complicated issues and conflicts in the digital realm. As a researcher holding an M.A. in International Relations from Budapest Business School in Hungary, an LL.M. in International Law from the European Public Law Organization in Greece, and multiple certifications in cybersecurity and digital policy, his doctoral research is distinctly multidisciplinary, taking a holistic approach to the intricate field of cyber diplomacy and security. Yasin is passionate about examining the evolution of technology and its profound effect on international relations and global security. He has authored several academic publications on the subject and has participated in numerous academic and professional conferences. Actively engaging with a range of academic platforms, organizations, and civil society groups, he is dedicated to addressing emerging challenges and developing innovative solutions. Yasin is committed to promoting inclusivity and ensuring that the benefits of technological advancements are accessible to all, while also addressing potential risks and safeguarding privacy and security in the digital age. He looks forward to collaborating with the broader scientific community to strengthen interdisciplinary approaches, which he believes are crucial in the digital age. He sees this as an invaluable opportunity to engage in discussions that encompass science diplomacy, international cooperation, and the ethical use of technology, all aimed at addressing the complex challenges of our increasingly interconnected world. He believes these issues are vital in today’s global landscape, as they have the potential to disrupt economies and threaten international peace.
Professor Basil Germond
Professor of International Security
SFHEA FRGA, Chair in International Security and Co-Director of Security Lancaster research institute
Lancaster University
Professor Basil Germond is chair in International Security at Lancaster University with over 20 years of experience as a researcher in naval affairs, seapower and maritime security. He is Co-Director of the University research institute Security Lancaster and hold a Visiting Fellowship at the Royal Navy Strategic Studies Centre. Prior to his coming to Lancaster, he was Visiting Research Fellow at Oxford (Changing Character of War programme) and Research Fellow at the University of St Andrews. He got his PhD from the Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva. Professor Germond is an interdisciplinary scholar across social sciences and beyond; he applies mixed methods and approaches including corpus linguistics, content analysis, IR theories, and cumulative effect assessment (CEA).
He has widely published on maritime security and geopolitics, seapower, navies, climate security, and the UK’s defence policy and national security. He has advised Parliament and Government on these topics.
Cassie Lowery
Doctoral Researcher & Social Psychologist
University of Bath
Cassie Lowery is a final-year PhD student and social psychologist based in the Department of Psychology at the University of Bath, and part of the interdisciplinary Centre for Doctoral Training in cybersecurity (TIPS-at-Scale). Her work has focused on inter and intra group processes, particularly mobilisation and collective action. Now she primarily explores these topics in online spaces using both qualitative and quantitative research methods. She studies groups across the political spectrum, from extreme and far-right movements to left-wing activists advocating for progressive social change, examining the processes and factors underlying the similarities and differences across groups. Her PhD investigates different forms of online collective actions, including social media-based behaviours, as well as more technically advanced forms of cyber-attacks and hacktivism, unpacking when and why groups choose to engage with specific types of actions.
Michael James
Information Governance, Risk and Compliance Consultant
Michael James is an Information Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) consultant, with wide experience of cyber security across private, public, and defence sectors. Informed by earlier careers as a Chartered Engineer in the software engineering and systems analysis domains, his cyber work has focussed on tailored risk mitigation strategies in specialist environments as well as design of controls aligned with widely used frameworks such as NIST, ISO. Domains of application have included UK Critical National Infrastructure, energy utilities, automotive, telecoms and aerospace. Technical analytic work includes the fields of applied cryptography and cyber threat analysis.
Within the policy, process and training components of the corporate cyber solution stack he deploys adoption and awareness strategies to align social, communication and technical controls to provide a security continuum for business risk mitigation. To mitigate the corporate tendency to silo information security, his work has frequently addressed the business and security interfaces between the legal, human resources, audit, communication, marketing and project management functions.
Dr. Rachel Moss
Senior Lecturer in History
University of Northampton
After completing a PhD in Medieval Studies at the University of York and postdoctoral fellowships at l’Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne and the University of Oxford, Dr Rachel E. Moss is now a Senior Lecturer at the University of Northampton, UK. She has internationally recognised expertise in the history of late medieval gender, sexuality and family. She is the author of the first monograph on medieval fatherhood, Fatherhood and its Representations in Middle English Texts (D.S. Brewer, 2013), co-editor of the landmark volume The Palgrave Handbook of Masculinity and Political Culture (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), series editor of the forthcoming series Political Nostalgias (Arc Humanities) and has authored a number of articles and chapters on late medieval adolescence, masculinity, literary culture and family dynamics. She also has growing expertise in medievalism in the context of the contemporary extreme right and is a founding member of the Extreme Right Research Network (ERRN).
Dr. Lewys Brace
Senior Lecturer in Computational Social Science
University of Exeter
Lewys Brace is a Senior Lecturer in Computational Social Science and Co-Director of the University of Exeter's Q-Step Centre, where he specialises in data science, artificial intelligence, extremism, terrorism, cybercrime, security, and Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT). His research currently focuses on online extremist radicalisation and the development of computational research methods for the social sciences and has appeared in journals such as Terrorism and Political Violence, Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, and Perspectives on Terrorism.
He can be found on Twitter with the handle @Lew_Brace and Bluesky @lewysbrace.bsky.social.
Dr. Jekaterina Rindt
Lecturer in Marketing
Lancaster University
Dr Jekaterina Rindt is Lecturer in Marketing at Lancaster University Management School and a Visiting Scholar at the University of Pavia (Italy). Her research focuses at the intersection of innovation, regulation, risk and markets. Her work explores the use of various approaches to corporate self-regulation and policy co-creation for managing (disruptive) innovation. Jekaterina contributed to the consultation of the British Ministry of Defence on "Innovation in complex organisations" (2021). Theoretically, her work is rooted in institutional theory and network research advanced by the Industrial Marketing and Purchasing (IMP) group. Her work on the use of private rules to managing risk in international business networks has been cited in the UK Parliamentary Office of Science (POST) briefing report on "Food Waste" (2024), and she is elected for the panel of the UK national launch of the ISO Innovation Management System Standard 5006:2024. In a second strand of work, she co-leads a cross-disciplinary, design-led policy innovation project, funded by two grants from the British Academy and the Arts and Humanities Research Council UK, which has been presented recently at the Design Research Society (Boston, 2024).
Lee Francis
Teaching Fellow in Marketing
Lancaster University
​​Lee is currently a Teaching Fellow and Consultant at Lancaster University, teaching everything from marketing basics, social media, digital marketing, qualitative research methods, to consultancy and dissertations. Lee has taught hundreds of students and worked with dozens of clients on consultancy projects, ranging from local SMEs to media corporates. He specialises in video and attention-based projects and is widely regarded for his enthusiastic and no-nonsense approach. His research interests include the creator economy, videography and online communities. In his spare time, he freelances as a consultant, is an online course educator for Udemy, a published fiction author and YouTube Partner with Bismuth Films.
Sarah-Jane Wiggins
Doctoral Researcher & Associate Lecturer
Lancaster University
Sarah is a PhD researcher in the Department of Marketing at Lancaster University, specialising in digital and responsible marketing. Her research explores the intersection of humanity and technology, with a particular focus on the dynamic relationship between social media platforms and culture. Sarah’s PhD adopts a critical marketing approach and a Foucauldian philosophical lens to explore whether surveillance-driven AI hyper-targeted adverts are impacting consumer decision making autonomy, leading to overconsumption. Her most recent work contributes to the theoretical field of platform studies, exploring this phenomenon at the intersection between consumers and digital marketing practitioners. Sarah’s previous research drew upon the philosophical theories of Zygmunt Bauman and focused on the emerging concept of “Enshittification” - a three stage decaying process of social media platforms, and explored the degradation of user experience and its impact on interpersonal human relationships. Sarah was awarded the Fulgoni scholarship for digital marketing at Lancaster University.
Alongside her research, Sarah is a tutor of Social Media Marketing at Lancaster. She is also an established marketing practitioner, and holds the role of Senior Marketing and Communications Officer for the Liverpool portfolio of the National Trust, which includes Speke Hall, The Beatles’ Childhood Homes, and the Hardmans’ House. Previous roles include marketing manager for a major music festival in South West Scotland, advertising agency work and various consultancy and freelance projects.
Professor James Cronin
Professor in Marketing and Consumer Culture Studies
Lancaster University
James is a Professor in Consumer Culture Studies with the Department of Marketing at Lancaster University Management School and Director of the LUMS Centre for Consumption Insights. His principal research focuses on the social and cultural aspects of consumer behaviour including collective and symbolic forms of consumption, marketplace ideologies, consumer escapism, and the cultural politics of marketing. Using critical theory and contemporary philosophical concepts, his work delves into the ideological underpinnings of online and offline aspects of consumer culture, exploring how various consumer subjectivities both reproduce and resist commodification in an increasingly digitalised world. James is particularly interested in the intersection and imbrication of desire, affect, and fantasy in mediating the relationships between consumers, platforms, and the culture industries.
Much of James's current research activities focus on how social structures, political economy, and ideologically-mediated interactions between people shape and ground their consumption experiences. With Sophie James, his recent work has explored the role of the unsettling within consumer culture and the obscene enjoyment of thanatourism.
Dr. Sophie James
Lecturer in Security & Protection Science
Lancaster University
Dr. Sophie James is a Lecturer in Security and Protection Science based in the Marketing Department at Lancaster University Management School. She is an Associate Fellow for the Research Institute for Sociotechnical Cyber Security (RISCS) and a member of the Centre for Consumption Insights. Her work has been published in journals such as Marketing Theory, Consumption, Markets & Culture, and Annals of Tourism Research. Sophie co-led Lancaster University's involvement in Cyber Education Week as part of the 2025 Cyber Festival organised by the Lancashire Cyber Partnership.
Sophie's research focuses on digital anthropology, exploring how individuals engage with web-based platforms for ideological reasons. Sophie specialises in ethnography - a netnography of the internet. Drawing on theories of consumer identity and socio-historic patterns, she investigates how the uncanny and obscene on the clear web can undermine trust in expert systems and have broader ethical and social implications. Sophie is also interested in ideological deadlocks in dissident political opinions and their potential impact on policy interventions to curb misinformation.
