Publications

2025

1. 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

   Abs

   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.

2. DSIT

   Securing Converged Technologies: Insights from Subject Matter Experts

   Andrew Dwyer , and Mikaela Brough

   2025

   Abs

   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.

2022

1. 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.

2. 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.

2021

1. 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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