Lulu Shi

About me

Lulu is a lecturer at the Department of Education and a research associate at the Oxford Internet Institute. She is a sociologist whose research spans technology, education, and work.

Her research examines digital and social change through the lenses of sociology and political economy, with particular focus on social justice, power, and equity. Currently, she leads a project that maps participatory co-design practices in digital education, developing approaches to enable more inclusive and education-centred innovations. Previously, she built the first Edtech Popularity Index, applying computational methods to track technology adoption across OECD countries. She has investigated how AI and education are framed in policies in the UK and internationally, analysing the discourses and political visions embedded in policy strategies. In related work, she has examined datafication processes in the classroom. Her earlier research on the automation of work used forecasting methods and examined how automation visions are informed by social and cultural factors.

Methodologically, Lulu uses qualitative, quantitative, experimental, and computational approaches. Her work has been supported by a range of funders, including the British Academy and the British Educational Research Association (BERA), and her research has informed policy at national and international level, including work with the UK Parliament, the UN agency ITU, and the Department for Education, and she engages regularly with schools, industry, and the wider public.

Lulu teaches the MSc Digital and Social Change and supervises MSc students working at the intersection of technology and society.

Research

Publications