the Web is a network of
networks of technologies and people…

I study the impact of the web on society — the way in which the global communications infrastructure changes our personal, social and economic landscape. How does the Web threaten our privacy, the quality of our relationships, our intellectual property, our creative industries and even our high streets? At the same time, what new opportunities does it open up for new kinds of industries and new kinds of sociability?

With my colleagues and students in the Web Science Institute at the University of Southampton and with our partners from industry and government, I am trying to understand how to identify the future opportunities of the digital economy whilst trying to navigate its current challenges, to maximise the social and economic benefit that the online world offers.

Roles and responsibilities

September 2009 –
Director, Web Science Doctoral Training Centre

The Web Science DTC is set up to train a cohort of 80 web science PhDs to become leaders in the UK digital economy. Admitting 15 students annually from social science, engineering and humanities backgrounds, it provides an multidisciplinary, cohort-based training regime with emphasis on developing advanced expertise in the context of relationships with industry and government Read more...

September 2012 –
Member of CAS Network of Excellence

The Computing At Schools Network of Excellence supports primary and secondary schools in the development of the new Computer Science curriculum. At Southampton I run the regional CAS Hub and host the CAS Wessex conference. Read more...

October 1999 –
Director, EPrints Repository Team

Open Access is the challenge of modernising the scientific and scholarly communications ecosystem to take advantage of the Web. At Southampton we have pioneered the concept of the institutional repository with the EPrints open source platform, the ROAR international registry of Open Access repositories and the ROARMAP registry of Open Access policies. Read more...

Opportunities for Study & Research in Web Science

Apply for a 3- or 4-year PhD studentship Read more...

Apply for our 1-year MSc programmes Read more...

Apply for our new BSc Programme Read more...

© 2013 Leslie Carr, provided under a Creative Commons Attribution license
Template design by Andreas Viklund