Director of the Visual Social Media Lab, where she leads interdisciplinary research on social media images at the intersection of academia and industry. She has researched social media since 2005. High profile projects include work on information flows and rumours during the 2011 UK riots and viral images of the refugee crisis in Europe. Her work focuses on developing methods for analyzing social media; issues that arise with the widespread use of data and associated technologies, in particular how this is changing journalism. She is Professor of Digital Media at the Manchester School of Art. Prior to this she was a Faculty Research Fellow for five years in the Information School at the University of Sheffield. She sits on the Board of Directors of the Big Boulder Initiative, which is concerned with the sustainable future of the social data industry. She is a founding member of Open Data Manchester, a thriving open data community in the North of England. The Visual Social Media Lab is a member the First Draft News Academic Partner Network, focused on collaborative approaches for dealing with the challenges of online mis- and disinformation. Current projects include work on the role of images in the spread of mis- and disinformation, especially around election time. She was a key witness for the recent House of Lords Select Committee inquiry on political polling and digital media, which reported its findings in April 2018. She has a PhD in Media and Communication from the Manchester School of Art and is a regular public speaker. She grows her own food and for the last ten years has on and off been training to become a horse whisperer.