Meet the Digital Society Theme Lead

Learn more about Rachel Gibson.

"The early techno-optimism about the Digital Society has taken a more pessimistic turn in recent years as it is increasingly linked with the rise of disinformation, distrust and polarisation.

Scholarship seeking to explain these trends and provide potential solutions to these growing problems is now more important than ever." - Rachel Gibson

 

Rachel Gibson is a Professor of Politics at the University of Manchester. Her research focuses on how digital technologies are changing the way in which election campaigns are fought and won.

Her work is comparative in nature with a particular focus on developments in the UK, the U.S., Germany, Australia and France. She has published a wide range of articles and books on this topic, more details of which can be found on her personal website www.rachelgibson.info.

She has just completed a five year study of Digital Campaigning and Electoral Democracy (DiCED) funded by the European Research Council (ERC) and is Principal Investigator of the UKRI Smart Data Research (SDR) project DIGISURVOR that is examining the methodological and ethical challenges of linking individual level survey and digital trace data. Prior to her ERC grant, she was Director of the Cathie Marsh Institute for Social Research and the Institute for Social Change.

Before her Professorship at Manchester she held academic positions at the University of Leicester, the Australian National University and the Mannheim Centre for European Research (MZES).