Josh Cowls Academic CV (updated July 2016) [email protected] | www.joshcowls.com | @JoshCowls
Summary I am a student and researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, exploring the transformative impact of technology on politics, the media and society.
Education S.M., Comparative Media Studies, expected May 2017 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA Thesis (proposed): ‘The Trump Candidacy in Social and Mainstream Media’
M.Sc., Social Science of the Internet, September 2013 University of Oxford, Oxford, UK Thesis: ‘Social Media and the Dynamics of Agenda Setting in UK Political Discourse’
B.A. (Hons.), History and Politics, July 2011 (First Class) University of Exeter, Exeter, UK Thesis: ‘A Three-dimensional Conceptualisation of Ideological Attitudes’ (Included study abroad at the University of Victoria, BC, Canada, Fall 2009.)
Selected experience Research Assistant, September 2015 – present HyperStudio, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Develop product prototypes and conduct background research for projects utilitizing new sources of data for the study and teaching of Digital Humanities.
Research Assistant, October 2013 – August 2015 Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford Focus on the integration of big data in the social sciences, the use of web archives in humanities research, and the policy framework surrounding state surveillance.
Blog Editor, May 2013 – August 2013 Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford Solicited and edited contributions for a policy-oriented academic blog.
Project Manager, March 2012 – September 2012 Eproductive, London, UK Launched and managed a range of digital products designed for non-profits.
Spring Fellowship, January 2012 – March 2012 Obama for America, New Hampshire Developed grassroots organisation with responsibility for Goffstown, NH.
Sub-Editor and Section Editor, December 2010 – December 2011 The Vibe, online Edited and promoted political and cultural content by aspiring young writers.
Policy Intern, May 2011 – October 2011 Liberal Democrat headquarters, London, UK Conducted research for ministerial speeches and briefings in the policy unit.
Community Organiser, March 2010 – May 2010 Power2010, Exeter, UK Ran local outreach for constitutional reform campaign during general election.
Projects Digital Citizenship and Surveillance Society, March – August 2015 (Research Assistant at OII) ESRC-funded project exploring surveillance policy in light of Snowden revelations.
innovation.world: A Cross-National Comparison of Open Government Data Innovation Hubs, January – December 2015 (Co-Principal Investigator) Nesta-funded project investigating use of open government data by civil society.
Big UK Domain Data for the Arts and Humanities, January 2014 – March 2015 (Research assistant at OII) AHRC-funded project facilitating engagement with archived .uk domain data.
Accessing and Using Big Data to Advance Social Science Knowledge, October 2013 – August 2014 (Research assistant at OII) Sloan Foundation-funded project exploring use of big data in social science.
MySaveTheChildren, March – September 2012 (Project Manager at Eproductive) Stakeholder networking software for launch charity Save the Children.
Politicube, September 2010 – July 2011 (Creator) Online questionnaire calculating ideology in three dimensions. (www.politicube.org)
Mapping Change, 2006 – 2007 (Founder) Online geographic platform encouraging greater action on climate change.
Selected honours and appointments o Participant, Harvard vs MIT Case Competition, 2016 o Winner, Yahoo News College Contributor Contest, 2016 o Shortlisted, World Nomads Travel Writing Scholarship 2015 o ‘Leader of Tomorrow’ awardee, St. Gallen Symposium, May 2015 o Best Poster, ‘Big Data in a Transdisciplinary Perspective’, Volkswagen Foundation Herrenhausen Conference, Hannover, March 2015 o Chair, University of Exeter Class of 2011 Graduating Committee, 2010 – 2011 o Vice Chancellor’s Excellence Scholar, University of Exeter, 2008 – 2011 o Head Boy, The Ashcombe School, 2007 – 2008 o Winner, ‘The Big Boost’ award from UnLtd/The Guardian, 2006
Peer-reviewed publications Meyer, Eric T., Schroeder, Ralph, and Cowls, Josh (2016). The Net as a Knowledge Machine: How the Web Became Embedded in Research. New Media and Society, May 5, 2016.
Cowls, Josh and Ralph Schroeder (2016). Answering Questions and Questioning Answers in the Age of Big Data. Policy & Internet 7 (4), pp. 447-472.
Fjeld, Morten, Woźniak, Paweł, Cowls, Josh and Nardi, Bonnie (2015). Ad-hoc encounters with big data: Engaging citizens in conversations around tabletops. First Monday 20 (2).
Taylor, Linnet, Cowls, Josh, Schroeder, Ralph and Eric T. Meyer (2014). Big Data and Positive Change in the Developing World: Challenges and Opportunities. Policy & Internet 6 (4), pp. 418-444.
Edited book chapters Cowls, Josh (Forthcoming). Cultures of the UK Web. In Bruggers, Niels and Schroeder, Ralph (eds), The Web as History.
Cowls, Josh and Bright, Jonathan (Forthcoming). International Hyperlinks in Online News Media. In Bruggers, Niels and Schroeder, Ralph (eds), The Web as History.
Schroeder, Ralph and Cowls, Josh (Forthcoming). Big Data Approaches to the Analysis of Social Media. In Jeremy Hunsinger, Lisbeth Klastrup and Matthew Allen (eds.), The International Handbook of Internet Research, forthcoming.
Brügger, Niels, Cowls, Josh and Schroeder, Ralph (Forthcoming). The Historical Web as a Tool for Analysing Social Change. In Jeremy Hunsinger, Lisbeth Klastrup and Matthew Allen (eds.), The International Handbook of Internet Research, forthcoming.
Reports Rubinstein, Mor, Cowls, Josh and Cath, Corinne (2016). OpenData.Innovation: An international journey to discover innovative uses of open data. Nesta.
Brown, Ian, and Cowls, Josh (2015). Check The Web: Assessing The Ethics And Politics Of Policing The Internet For Extremist Material. VOX-Pol Reports.
Conference papers Nanni, Federico and Cowls, Josh (2016). The Potential and Perils of Election Prediction using Social Media Sources. Connected Life, June 2016, Oxford Internet Institute, UK.
Cowls, Josh and Schroeder, Ralph (2015) Big Data and Power: What’s New(s)? Data Power Conference, June 2015, University of Sheffield, UK.
Schroeder, Ralph, Cowls, Josh and Meyer, Eric (2015) Mining Data about the Public as a Tool for Policy. ‘Policy-Making in the Big Data Era’, June 2015, University of Cambridge, UK.
Cowls, Josh, Schroeder, Ralph and Meyer, Eric T. (2015) Untangling the Archived Web for Humanities Research. ‘Web Archives as Scholarly Sources’, June 2015, Aarhus, Denmark.
Cowls, Josh (2015) Using Big Data for Valid Research: three challenges. Big Data in a Transdisciplinary Perspective, Volkswagen Foundation Herrenhausen Conference, March 2015, Hannover, Germany.
Cowls, Josh and Schroeder, Ralph (2015) The Ethics of Given-off versus Captured Data in Digital Social Research. Workshop on Ethics for Studying Sociotechnical Systems in a Big Data World, CSCW 2015, March 2015, Vancouver, B.C., Canada.
Cowls, Josh (2014) The Crowd in the Cloud? Three challenges for gauging public opinion online. IPP2014: Crowdsourcing for Politics and Policy, September 2014, Oxford, UK.
Cowls, Josh, Taylor, Linnet and Schroeder, Ralph (2014) Big Data for Social Change: An LMIC Perspective. Data Science for Social Good Workshop, KDD@Bloomberg’, August 2014, New York, NY, USA.
Schroeder, Ralph and Cowls, Josh (2014) Big Data, Ethics, and the Social Implications of Knowledge Production. Data Ethics Workshop, KDD@Bloomberg, August 24 2014, New York, NY, USA.
Hale, S.A., Yasseri, T., Cowls, J., Meyer, E.T., Schroeder, R., and Margetts, H. (2014) Mapping the UK webspace: Fifteen years of British universities on the web. WebSci'14, Bloomington, IN, USA.
Invited talks and presentations
The Ethics And Politics Of Policing The Internet For Violent Extremist Content. Invited presentation as part of the VOX-Pol lunch briefing series, King’s College, London, UK, November 2015.
Displaying and Visualising the Results of Big Domain Data Research. Invited presentation to ‘Digital Tools and Methods for using the UK web archive’, British Library, UK, May 2015.
Big UK Domain Data for the Arts and Humanities. (With Helen Hockx-Yu and Jane Winters) Invited presentation to the International Internet Preservation Consortium General Assembly, Stanford University, CA, USA, April 2015.
The Big Data Revolution for Human and Social Sciences. Invited presentation to ‘Big Data, Sciences Humaines, Sciences Sociales’, Universite Stendhal, France, December 2014.
Who does the web think you are? (With Ralph Schroeder) Public talk at ‘Being Human: a festival of the humanities’, London, November 2014.
Social media: the good, the bad, and the ugly. Public talk at BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, Oxfordshire Branch, Oxford, UK, September 2014.
Mapping the UK Webspace: the topology of a national web domain. Presentation to ‘Web Archiving and Archived Web — a new Research Method, a new Object of Study?’, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark, June 2014.
Accessing and Using Big Data to Advance Social Science Knowledge. (With Eric Meyer and Ralph Schroeder). Oxford Internet Institute Brown Bag Series, Oxford, June 2014.
Drinking from the firehose? The pitfalls and potential of Big Data. Presentation at t2i Lab, Chalmers Institute of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden, March 2014.
Media experience o Frequent contributor to Monocle Radio including The Briefing and The Globalist shows. o Research has been covered in titles such as the Guardian and the Washington Post. o Author of a series of posts covering digital democracy for the London School of Economics British Politics & Policy Blog. o University newspaper bylines include Exeposé (2011-12), The Cherwell (2012-13), The Oxonian Globalist (2013), and The Tech (2015-2016). o Author of a series of featured blog posts on cultural and political aspects of the 2012 Olympic Games in London for the Huffington Post.
Academic assignments o Teaching Assistant, ‘Digital Humanities’, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, spring semester 2016. o Instructor, Digital Humanities Oxford Summer School Data Workshop, Oxford University, July 2015 o Lead organiser, ‘Connected Life 2015’ conference at the Oxford Internet Institute, June 2015 o Instructor, ‘CHASE Digital Tools and Methods for using the UK Web Archive’, British Library, May 2015 o Reviewer, ‘Web Archives as Scholarly Sources: Issues, Practices and Perspectives’ conference, Aarhus University, June 2015 o Panel moderator, ‘The Ethics of Big Data Research’, Web Archives as Big Data conference, Institute for Historical Research, University of London, December 2014. o Teaching Assistant, ‘Social Dynamics of the Internet’, a core module of the M.Sc. Social Science of the Internet, Oxford Internet Institute, October – December 2014. o Discussant, ‘Big Data and Political Science’ panel at the American Political Science Association 2014, Washington, D.C., USA, August 2014. o Panel moderator, ‘Privacy, safety and security in Big Data’, Chalmers Seminar on Big Data, Gothenburg, Sweden, March 2014.