 | Amel Attatfa, Abertay University RISCS Associate Fellow Dr Amel Attatfa's PhD thesis explored the emerging field of cyber diplomacy, focusing on the potential development of cyber diplomacy for regulating cyberspace through the establishment of norms to facilitate multistakeholder behaviours. Cyber diplomacy is crucial for maintaining peace, security, and trust in cyberspace, considering its significance in countries' foreign policies and the interdisciplinary nature of the domain. With a deep understanding of both cybersecurity and diplomatic principles, Amel brings a unique perspective to the sociotechnical cybersecurity community. Her expertise in cyber diplomacy positions her as a rising star in the field, contributing valuable insights to discussions on international cooperation, conflict resolution, and cyber governance. Furthermore, her research addresses fundamental questions about the role of cyber diplomacy in mitigating cybersecurity challenges in the digital age, highlighting the need for integrating diplomatic and cyber considerations. Amel served as a Graduate School Representative for the School of Design and Informatics (SDI), a Postgraduate Research Student Representative at the Senate, and a member of the Security Research Group and Athena Swan Committee at Abertay University. She has also been a member of SPRITE+ and Graduate Women of Scotland (GWS), as well as a representative in the UK PhD Cyber Network. Her diverse experiences include speaking engagements, serving as a research panelist, symposium chair, forum moderator, reviewer, module tutor, seminar lead, and contributor to digital inclusion report. She has made significant contributions to the field of cyber diplomacy through her publications and is working on prospective projects in this area. As a RISCS Associate Fellow, Amel looks forward to contributing thought leadership to the RISCS community and helping shape the research agenda in alignment with her expertise in cyber diplomacy. |
 | Sana Belguith, University of Bristol RISCS Associate Fellow Dr Sana Belguith is a Senior Lecturer in Cyber Security at the University of Bristol, UK. Her current research focuses on security and privacy in distributed systems such as investigating security issues in Satellite systems, autonomous vehicles, smart cities and intelligent transportation systems. Her recent works involve threat modelling of space systems security in the presence of AI and ML models, and investigating quantum computing threats to Critical National infrastructure. She also looks at privacy issues in distributed systems such as privacy preserving smart home applications and the application of the right to be forgotten in Machine Learning. Her expertise in technical aspects of cyber security combined with her deep understanding of legal requirements and social implications enables her research to follow an interdisciplinary approach to solve cyber security issues in distributed systems especially with a focus on the implications of using new technologies. She holds a PhD from the Polytechnic School of Tunisia. Her PhD focused on developing privacy preserving encrypted access control mechanisms for medical data shared in cloud based systems. After completing her PhD, she joined the University of Auckland (New Zealand) as a postdoc researcher, her research was funded by the STRATUS project (Security Technologies Returning Accountability, Trust and User-centric Services in the Cloud), a funded project by the Ministry of Business, Innovation, and Employment (MBIE) of New Zealand. During her postdoc, she has been working on security and privacy issues in distributed systems such as Publish and Subscribe systems, IoT, and cloud computing. She has led and contributed to multiple research projects: Project Co-I for SCULI: Securing Convergent Ultra-large Scale Infrastructures (2024-2029), PI for ASSAI: Assessing Space Security in the Presence of AI (2024-2025), PI for Securing Critical Infrastructure in the Quantum Era: From Awareness to Seamless Migration Towards Post-Quantum Cryptography Security (2023-24), PI for WalletFind: A Forensic Solution for Cryptocurrency e-Discovery, Recovery, Tracing and Auditing (2020-2021) and Co-I: Privextractor: Smart Home Privacy Extractor (2020), PI for Drones-Highway: Towards Deploying a Drones-based Transport System in Greater Manchester (2020-21), and PI for Greater Manchester Cyber Foundry (ERDF) to improve SME cyber operations (2019-21). |
 | Partha Das Chowdhury, University of Bristol RISCS Associate Fellow Dr Partha Das Chowdhury is a senior research associate at the National Research Centre on Privacy, Harm Reduction and Adversarial Influence Online (REPHRAIN) at the University of Bristol. Partha investigates the realism of the assumptions made while building systems. He takes interdisciplinary paths in his study. He leads the strand of research on REPHRAIN privacy testbed operating system to interrogate system design assumptions. He conceived and leads the strand of research to investigate the assumptions made by system designers about their users. He draws from theories of justice, social choice, and welfare economics to understand systematic exclusion in the digital world. To that end he was the first to propose Amartya Sen’s capability approach as a foundation to build protection mechanisms against online harms. These diverse strands aim to identify redressable manifest insecurities and exclusions. He was involved in the evaluation of six safety technologies to detect child sexually abusive material (CSAM) commissioned by GCHQ and the Home Office, UK. Partha was part of the scoping team for the £11 M node projects that were funded by REPHRAIN. He has published in New Security Paradigms Workshop (NSPW), Usenix PePR, IEEE SecDev, Security Protocols Workshop held annually at Cambridge, among others. |
 | Andrew Dwyer, Royal Holloway University, London RISCS Associate Fellow Dr Andrew Dwyer is a Lecturer in Information Security at Royal Holloway, University of London, where his research is arranged across three themes: 1) Digital Decisions; 2) Contested (Geo)Political Economies of Cyber Policy; and 3) ‘Critical’ Approaches to Cyber Security. Andrew is Co-I on the EPSRC-funded project ‘Equitable Privacy’ and also leads the UK Offensive Cyber Working Group, examining the evolving practices of cyber operations by states.. Previously, he has been an Addison Wheeler Fellow at Durham University and a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Bristol after completing his PhD at the University of Oxford in 2019 |
 | Sophie James, Lancaster University RISCS Associate Fellow Sophie James is a Doctoral Researcher and Lecturer in Security and Protection Science: Marketing, from Lancaster University. She specialises in qualitative interpretive research methodologies including online ethnography – referred to as ‘netnography’ – to explore virtual communities, their social-emotional communications, and their relationships with dissident ideas (e.g. witchcraft and magical thinking). Sophie’s critical socio-cultural approach will bring a fresh perspective to the predominantly positivist discipline of human-computer interaction, in-keeping with RISCS’s imperative for interdisciplinarity. Her work relates to digital anthropology, providing important contextualisation for digital transformation, socio-digital futures, and security challenges. Sophie’s future research will seek to provide in-depth insights on how individuals and groups engage with web-based communication platforms for a variety of ideological reasons. Sophie plans to contribute to RISCS’s agenda to enhance an interdisciplinary approach to teaching and research in cyber security. Sophie’s future research will draw from theories on consumer identity-making and socio-historic patterning, exploring how extreme or subversive content on social media networks and ‘dark’ corners of the web can erode trust in expert systems and have wider moral, ethical, social implications. Sophie is further interested in identifying the ideological deadlocks of dissident political opinions and how these may inform policy interventions on curbing the spread of misinformation. |
 | Oishee Kundu, University of Bath RISCS Associate Fellow Oishee Kundu is a Research Associate at the University of Bath, supporting UKRI’s Digital Security by Design initiative by conducting research on the adoption of secure digital technologies. She takes a systems view of innovation and has extensively reviewed the role of demand-side innovation policy instruments such as public procurement in the development and diffusion of innovation and technological transitions. She takes a keen interest in narratives and the thoughts, actions, and words used by different stakeholders in a system to make sense of events and processes. Prior to joining the University of Bath, Oishee worked on a public services innovation programme at Cardiff University where she developed "Caffael" - a public procurement boardgame for school pupils to discuss and develop an interest in public policy. She enjoys creating immersive learning environments and building bridges between university research and the wider public and has actively participated in public engagement and knowledge exchange activities such as the ESRC Festival of Social Science and Cheltenham Literature Festival. Oishee has a Bachelor’s degree in Economics (Delhi University) and a Master’s degree in International Economic Policy (Sciences Po). Her Master’s dissertation on defence procurement challenges won the Defence Economics Award 2017 from the French Ministry of Armed Forces and the inaugural Prix Bastien Irondelle from AEGES France. She completed her PhD at the University of Manchester in 2021. At RISCS, Oishee will examine digital transitions with a particular focus on how narratives, procurement processes, and collaborative innovation strategies affect the uptake and distribution of security in the digital environment. |
 | Rebecca Owens, Newcastle University RISCS Associate Fellow Rebecca Owens is a Legal Research Associate at Newcastle University, working on the AGENCY project (Assuring Citizen Agency in a World with Complex Online Harms). In which she collaborates with a cross-disciplinary team to design responsible technology that enhances citizen empowerment. Her research also spearheads the development of innovative policy frameworks that integrate core principles like trust, privacy, safety, and security throughout the entire digital technology lifecycle, from design to implementation. Rebecca’s PhD was fully funded by the Sir Joseph Rotblat Alumni Scholarship from the University of Liverpool, along with an FFWG grant. She also holds a master's degree from the University of Liverpool, fully funded by the John Lennon Memorial Scholarship, and a Bachelor of Laws (LLB) from the same University. Through her fellowship with RISCS, Rebecca is excited to explore how policy can be used holistically to empower the citizen-centric design of emerging technologies. |
 | Bianca Slocombe, Coventry University RISCS Associate Fellow Bianca Slocombe is an Assistant Professor at the Centre for Peace and Security at Coventry University, working within the Protective Security Lab. She began this position in July 2020 after completing her Master of Research and PhD in Psychology at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. Her doctoral research focused on the mitigation of violent action in the name of sacred values. Since then, she has been utilising her expertise in psychology and behavioural science across the field of security, including projects for the Centre for Research and Evidence on Security Threats (CREST) and the National Counter Terrorism Security Office (NaCTSO). Bianca has expertise in experimental and statistical methods and is particularly interested in working in interdisciplinary teams to address complex questions. |