I am a sociologist studying the everyday work that creates value through science. I focus, in particular, on overlooked actors essential to knowledge production but often excluded from the reputational and economic rewards of scientific achievement. These actors include database managers, patient and public involvement (PPI) contributors, and patient recruiters. By centring my research on these often-invisible contributors, I examine critical questions about what is valued in knowledge production, its implications for workers, and its impact on scientific practices and broader society. Through theoretically informed empirical research, combining ethnographic fieldwork, policy analysis, and qualitative interviews, I contribute to scholarly debates on the digital transformations and other socio-technical changes shaping science and work, such as platformisation.
My current research focuses on biomedicine and forensic science within public sector institutions such as universities and the National Health Service (NHS), domains marked by regulatory constraints and the tension between creating societal value and economic benefit. In biomedicine, I explore the political economy of knowledge, particularly how platform capitalism is adopted and adapted in health research. I investigate how data-intensive health research increasingly relies on citizens who view participation in research, even passively, as a routine part of accessing free healthcare. This highlights a reconfiguration of relationships between citizens, the state, and private enterprises. My work raises critical questions about who benefits from platformisation in the public sector and how these benefits are distributed.