Kellie Morrissey

I’m a Research Fellow and member of academic staff at Open Lab, School of Computing, Newcastle University. A psychologist by training, my main interests are in the intersection of health and politics in the design of digital technologies in sensitive settings. My background is in Applied Psychology, and I’ve been working in Human-Computer Interaction since my PhD (carried out in University College Cork, Ireland), where I worked within under-resourced nursing homes in the south of Ireland to explore the potential for digital interactions to create opportunities for social connection for people with moderate to severe dementia.

Following a one-year Research Associate position on the EPSRC-funded MyPlace project at Newcastle University, I was awarded a career fellowship in Open Lab in 2017, where I now lead the Digital Social Care research theme. I have been awarded several scholarships and research prizes during my academic career. My PhD was funded by the Irish Research Council (€48,000+), which funds pioneering research in Ireland, my home country. The awards support excellence in research and are extremely competitive. Since beginning my academic career, I’ve been awarded (as Co-I) a £1 million EPSRC bid on designing IOT connected objects for dementia and end of life with collaborators at Northumbria University and Sheffield Hallam, and have won other smaller grants from CHERISHDE, the Global Challenges Research Fund, and the Newcastle Institute for Social Renewal (totalling £30,000+).

I have also been a visiting researcher at Aarhus University’s Participatory Information Technology Centre (2014), funded by a grant from the Utrecht Network. I have a strong and growing publication record (with 14 publications over 2017 and 2018, and a further 3 accepted for publication in 2019), along with 1 Best Paper (top 5% of submissions at CHI), and three Honourable Mentions (top 10%). I also have several years of teaching, assessment, course/module creation, and undergraduate and postgraduate supervision.