Professor Panayiota Tsatsou
Panayiota is a Greek citizen who moved to the UK in 2003 to pursue postgraduate taught and research study. Panayiota has been research-active for more than a decade and her research lies in the broader field of digital media research.
Panayiota’s research has addressed phenomena concerning Internet studies and digital/Internet research, and her work has explored various facets of digital divides/digital inclusion, as well as topics and case studies concerning digital media and civic activism, children and the Internet, gender and the Internet, and digital policy and regulation. Panayiota’s recent projects have explored the digital inclusion/exclusion of vulnerable people and have aimed to contribute to innovative and evidence-based solutions to issues arising in vulnerable people’s relationships with digital media.
Panayiota has published widely on digital media and the role of ordinary people, vulnerable populations and researchers as digital media actors, while she has developed research collaborations in the UK and internationally and has presented her work in diverse venues. Panayiota is the author of Digital Divides in Europe: Culture, Politics and the Western-Southern Divide (2011, Peter Lang), which examines the Western–Southern divide in Europe. She is also the author of Internet Studies: Past, Present and Future Directions (2014, Ashgate), which offers a critical account of the past, present and future study of the Internet.
She is the co-editor of Social Inclusion and Usability of ICT-enabled Services (Routledge, 2017), which explores a wide range of issues concerning innovative ICT-enabled digital services, their usability and their consequent role in social inclusion. Further, Panayiota has edited the volume Vulnerable People and Digital Inclusion: Theoretical and Applied Perspectives (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), which offers an up-to-date research account of the role of digital inclusion in vulnerable people’s social inclusion and presents critical commentaries from practitioners who have experience in working to improve vulnerable people’s welfare.
Panayiota has led AHRC funded research on digital inclusion and minority communities in Wales, UK, and has worked as Co-investigator in British Academy funded research on digital inclusion, identity and literacy in the UK. She has conducted research on the role of digital technologies in social research in the UK which was funded by the EPSRC Communities and Culture Network+ (CCN+). More recently, Panayiota completed focus group research on digital inclusion of vulnerable communities in the UK, the published outputs of which inform and pave the way for future research on the status and prospects of the digital inclusion of vulnerable people and the implications for vulnerable people's social inclusion and welfare.
Currently, Panayiota is the Co-Investigator of a Nuffield Foundation funded project on Gypsy and Roman and Travellers (GRT) and GRT youth’s digital inclusion. She is also currently working on research grant proposals for the study of online blaming of ethnic and racial minorities and digital migration, as well as for the development of a social lab framework that will unpack vulnerable people’s digital inclusion.