Mikaela Brough

I am a PhD researcher in the Information Security Group at Royal Holloway, University of London, working as part of the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Cyber Security for the Everyday. The CDT is an interdisciplinary doctoral centre for research in cybersecurity, with researchers in cryptography, systems security, and the qualitative/quantitative social sciences.

Research Area

My work explores how members of environmental social movements navigate their information security. To do this, I take a multi-sited, engaged ethnographic approach in both the Southern Philippines (PH) and the United Kingdom (UK). This approach involves formal and informal interviews, embedded observation through extended fieldwork, and generally working with participants in ways that they feel benefit them.

I am not alone in the pursuit of ethnography in information security, as I am part of an amazing Ethnography Group. The overall goal of my work is to examine how information security practices within social movements are shaped less by technology itself and more by the social and cultural contexts in which they emerge. See abstract here.

I am supervised by Dr. Rikke Bjerg Jensen and Professor Martin Albrecht, an ethnographer and a cryptographer respectively. My doctoral research is affiliated to, but not funded by, their EPSRC-funded interdisciplinary project Social Foundations of Cryptography. My work is funded through a EPSRC studentship associated with the CDT.

Current Work

I spent 2023-2024 working on this project in the UK. My work in the Philippines is a nearly 2 year formal collaboration between myself, local universities in PH and environmental advocacy groups. I returned recently to London from a second long period of work in the Philippines. I am currently working on analysing and writing up my thesis.

Etc.

I also like to do things outside my thesis. I recently finished working as a research assistant for a DSIT project about security convergence / emerging technology. I am also a teaching assistant for computer networking, intro to cryptography, and programming/statistics (mostly Python, though I can mess around with R quite well…C and Java less so). During a previous RA stint at the University of Oxford, I worked in other areas of qualitative social research, hence the two publications on family planning.

I completed my MSc in Social Anthropology at the University of Oxford in 2021 under the supervision of Dr. Ina Zharkevich. I have a BA from McGill University. I worked as a chef for ages, full time for a while, but otherwise in conjunction with other activities. I grew up in southern Ontario, but tend to split my non-fieldwork time between London and southern Italy.

My first language is English and I am comfortable in Italian. I can unconfidently speak Canadian French and have been learning and chatting Tagalog for about a year now (although Taglish might be more accurate…) :)

Email me!

news

Aug 15, 2025	Wrapping up three great days at USENIX Security ‘25, where I presented our paper on the UK climate movement! I’m also excited share that this work received an Honourable Mention for Best Paper award!
Jun 05, 2025	Fieldwork in the Philippines has wrapped up! Back in London
Jun 03, 2025	Had a great time presenting early insights from recent fieldwork at Re-imagining Cryptography and Privacy 2025!
Jun 03, 2025	Recent work on the UK climate movement has been accepted to USENIX Security ‘25!
Feb 06, 2025	First days back in Cebu City for longer term fieldwork!

selected publications

USENIX

On the Virtues of Information Security in the UK Climate Movement

Mikaela Brough, Rikke Bjerg Jensen , and Martin R. Albrecht

In Proceedings of the 34th USENIX Security Symposium , 2025

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We report on an ethnographic study with members of the climate movement in the United Kingdom (UK). We conducted participant observation and interviews at protests and in various activist settings. Reporting on the findings as they relate to information security, we show that members of the UK climate movement wrestled with (i) a fundamental tension between openness and secrecy; (ii) tensions between autonomy and collective interdependence in information-security decision-making; (iii) conflicting activist ideals that shape security discourses; and (iv) pressures from different social gazes – from each other, from people outside the movement and from their adversaries. Overall, our findings shed light on the social complexities of information-security research in activist settings and provoke methodological questions about programmes that aim to design for activists.
DSIT

Securing Converged Technologies: Insights from Subject Matter Experts

Andrew Dwyer , and Mikaela Brough

2025

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The convergence of existing and emerging technologies are increasingly reshaping contemporary capabilities of states, organisations, and society with significant risks and opportunities for cyber security. Based on research with 20 subject matter experts primarily from within the cyber security sector, this report examines the role of technology convergence, its impact upon cyber security, and potential policy responses to identifying and mitigating technology convergence in the domain. We present a series of findings on the challenges of identifying technology convergences for cyber security, how technology convergence operates across broader technology ecologies, and how engagement with a range of actors in order to build expert communities is essential to addressing and mitigating the impact of technology convergence for cyber security.