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 research is ethnographic in nature - meaning that I both interview people and embed myself socially/physically within the spaces I study. I am not alone in this endeavour, as I am part of an amazing Ethnography Group.

My work explores the digital security practices and perceptions of climate activists in different risky political contexts. From the grassroots to the transnational, my work aims to understand the social, cultural and political dynamics that frame groups’ technological choices. Rather than studying secure/cryptographic technologies through a social lens, I aim to study the social first - building our understanding of security from the ground up. I am supervised by Dr. Rikke Bjerg Jensen and Professor Martin Albrecht, an ethnographer and a cryptographer respectively. My doctoral research is linked 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 have spent the last year working on this project in the UK, with the passage of the Public Order Bill Amendments of 2023 providing the backdrop (findings forthcoming). I am currently continuing to work in the UK, but am also exploring these dynamics in the Philippines, with the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2020 providing the context. I am currently conducting remote interviews for this project in preparation for two research visits to the Philippines - one in the summer of 2024 and a second and much longer visit in the winter/spring of 2025. I will also be attending COP29 in Azerbaijan.

Etc.

I also like to do things outside my research area. I have a good grasp of things like computer networking (for which I am currently a TA), cryptography, and programming/statistics (mostly Python, though I can mess around in R quite well, and C less so - I am also a TA for Python). During an 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, during which time I worked and volunteered with a number of advocacy groups in Montréal. I also care about things that are not strictly related to digital rights/surveillance – harm reduction, cooking education, language education, the Special Olympics (rhythmic gymnastics), and refugee protections. 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 time between London and southern Italy.

Can collaborate in English, Italian, and French. I am currently learning Tagalog and a bit of Bisayan.

latest posts

Mar 24, 2024	On the start of a new project in the Philippines...
Mar 08, 2024	Why study the UK climate movement from a digital security perspective?
Mar 05, 2024	Navigating the high/low risk binary - a theoretical article

selected publications

SS

Fertility decision-making in the UK: Insights from a qualitative study among British men and women

Mikaela Brough, and Paula Sheppard

Social Sciences, 2022

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Scholars are interested in better understanding the low fertility observed in higher income countries. While some people are choosing to have smaller families, countries also report a ‘fertility gap’, which is the proportion of people who end up with fewer children than originally desired. This paper investigates some causes of the fertility gap in the UK. We amassed qualitative data from seven focus groups conducted among men and women of reproductive age with different educational backgrounds. These focus groups suggest that social support is an influential factor for Britons thinking about having children, although discussions differed in terms of whether this was support from partners or parents. Discussions with university-educated women featured themes of career opportunity costs, and non-university men contributed insights on the financial burden of parenthood. This exploratory study provides up-to-date material on unwanted childlessness and the low fertility in the UK, and highlights the merit of using qualitative methods in understanding the fertility gap.
SS

Father–Toddler Bonding during the COVID-19 Lockdown: Qualitative Insights from 17 Families in Britain

Paula Sheppard , and Mikaela Brough

Social Sciences, 2022

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The UK lockdowns brought about many domestic changes. One was that many families with young children found themselves in the largely unique situation where fathers who normally worked away and saw little of their children during the day were now at home full-time. This was coupled with the fact that grandparents were now unavailable as lockdown rules prohibited visits and travel and many elderly were especially vulnerable. This study aimed to explore how this novel family situation was regarded by parents of young children and how they thought it would affect their children’s social development. Thematic analysis of interviews with 24 mothers and fathers of toddlers revealed that most parents did not think that the lockdown negatively impacted their child’s development, although they worried about it nonetheless. Having fathers at home was overwhelmingly seen as a positive for both the dad’s attachment to the toddler and the toddler’s attachment to their dad. The narrative around grandparents was more divided; there was an almost even split between parents thinking grandparental absence had a negative impact on the grandparent–child relationship and those who thought it made no difference. This study provides qualitative insight into an unusual domestic situation suggesting that parents felt father-child bonds were strengthened by the lockdown, although it remains to be seen if father-child relationships are improved long-term.
JASO

Review of “Benno Herzog, Invisibilization of Suffering: A Moral Grammar of Disrespect”

Mikaela Brough

Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford, 2021

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