Hi, I’m Jo.

I recently completed my PhD in Sociology at the University of Cambridge.

For my doctoral research, I studied how people actually live with smart city technologies. By this I mean: smart city projects are usually designed around ideas of optimization and efficiency, thus creating expectations around how users should behave. In practice, users often use technologies in a variety of ways, often in ways outside their intended design. Over the course of my PhD, I drew on qualitative methods to study the gap between the visions of smart cities—seamless and friction-free—and their actual implementation, focusing on the lived experiences of city residents and the implications of this gap on digital inclusion and urban liveability.

You can find out more about my research here.

As of June 2026, I’ve just moved to the Bay Area and am exploring new opportunities – feel free to reach out if you’d like to connect! Outside of work, I’m usually playing tennis, doing yoga, hiking, or reading immersive fantasy and sci-fi.