Sarah Turner

Sarah Turner is a PhD Researcher in the School of Computing at the University of Kent, and a member of the Institute of Cyber Security for Society iCSS. Her research focuses on how families address the cyber security issues arising from using Internet of Things devices in the home.

Prior to this, Sarah received an MPA in Digital Technology and Public Policy from UCL’s Department of Science, Technology, Engineering and Public Policy, and spent some time working as a Research Associate at PETRAS, the National Centre of Excellence for IoT Systems Cybersecurity.

A lifelong collector of degrees of all shapes and sizes, Sarah has an MA in Literae Humaniores from the University of Oxford, an LLB from BPP Law School, and an MBA from the Open University. The last two of those were undertaken whilst she worked full-time in the financial services industry, creating and managing teams and technologies to meet regulatory obligations.

As a result of her interdisciplinary background and work experience, Sarah is particularly interested in how systems get to a point of needing to be regulated, and what that regulation should look like; why people use technology they don’t always fully understand, how they can hope to use them safely and how such technologies should be designed and created. As well as researching these issues in an academic capacity, she provides consultancy services for organisations trying to figure these things out (do get in touch if you’re such an organisation!).

Outside of her research, Sarah is a Director/Trustee and Caldicott Guardian of the Breastfeeding Network, as well as a long-standing peer supporter of new parents facing infant feeding problems in the London borough of Tower Hamlets and on the National Breastfeeding Helpline.

Sarah lives in south-east London, with her husband and two young children. She spends too much time reading Twitter and not enough time reading books.