Francesca Farmer is a research assistant at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in collaboration with the University of Exeter working on the GLAM-E Lab which is an interdisciplinary digitisation clinic for smaller and less well-resourced cultural institutions and community organisations. Francesca has an ESRC funded PhD in politics from the University of Exeter. Her thesis was entitled Cybercrime vs Hacktivism: Do we need a differentiated regulatory approach?’ Francesca also has an MA in European Politics and an MRES in Politics from the University of Exeter.
Research Interests
Francesca explores the intersection between technology, law and public policy. Her research considers the impact that technology is having on a number of issues including protest, privacy and copyright.
She has recently finished a research project at the University of Bristol’s Law School based within the UKRI-funded National Research Centre on Privacy, Harm Reduction and Adversarial Influence Online (‘REPHRAIN’). The project explored the decline of third-party cookies in the AdTech sector; charted the emergence of new practices in the AdTech sector in response to such decline including the use of privacy-enhancing technologies (‘PETs’) like anonymisation and explored the data privacy law challenges of these new practices. She has also worked at the UK Safer Internet Centre and on a number of research projects based at the University of Exeter.
The GLAM-E Lab aims to build expertise and confidence among heritage practitioners and reduce risk-aversion when navigating open access digitisation initiatives.The broader goals are to increase the online availability of digital collections and data; and enable more informed and ethically appropriate digitally-enabled participation by user groups and online communities.
Select Outputs
A. Vranaki and F. Farmer, ‘Third-Party Cookies, Data Analytics and Targeted Advertisements: Of Data Protection Law and Regulation’ (Report forthcoming).
F. Farmer, ‘Cybercrime vs Hacktivism: Do we need a differentiated regulatory approach?‘, PhD Thesis, 2022.
A. Vranki, A. Charlesworth and F. Farmer, Data: A New Direction Joint REPHRAIN and CGLI Consultation Response, 2021.
K. Tremlett and F. Farmer. Through These Walls: Impartial dispute resolution of online harm during a global pandemic, 2021.
Select Conference Appearances
‘Third-Party Cookies, Data Analytics and Targeted Advertisements: Of Data Protection Law and Regulation’, BILETA, 2022.
‘Third-Party Cookies, Data Analytics and Targeted Advertisements’, Poster Competition, REPHRAIN Interdisciplinary Biannual Meeting, 2022.
‘The UK’s current regulatory framework and its effects on electronic civil disobedience’, IWPP 2020 (Paper accepted but the conference cancelled due to Covid).
‘Hacktivism, Electronic Civil Disobedience and Protest: UK and European Legal Approaches’, Political Studies Association Early Careers Network, 2019.