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Dr Isabelle Higgins

Dr Isabelle Higgins is a Teaching Associate in Media and Culture and Sociological Theory. Isabelle is interested in studying empirical sites in which intersecting racial, reproductive and digital inequalities are reproduced through the design and use of everyday technologies. She draws on a range of social theory to critically interrogate the nature of power and inequality reflected in such empirical locations.  

Her PhD research, for example, explored how children deemed eligible for adoption in the USA are represented and/or monetised online by actors including government agencies, private adoption agencies and adoptive parents who work as social media influencers. She drew on insights from a range of sociological (and adjacent) traditions, including the sociology of ‘race’ and racism, decolonial thought, reproductive sociology, ‘race critical code studies’ and media and cultural studies, to show that the work of self-described ‘adoption advocates’ reproduces intersectionally racialised forms of structural inequality with long histories. Isabelle studied for her PhD, MPhil, and undergraduate degrees at the Department of Sociology, University of Cambridge.  

Isabelle has published her empirical research with the journal New Media and Society. She has been the recipient of a range of awards and fellowships at all stages of her academic career (more details on these in the 'Awards' section below). For the 2024 - 2025 academic year, she holds a Tech Policy Fellowship with UC Berkeley. Isabelle is passionate about teaching and very much values the opportunity to connect and learn from the students she works with. 

Research Interests

Isabelle works interdisciplinarily, drawing on research produced by scholars working in the fields of digital sociology, race critical code studies, science and technology studies, the sociology of ‘race’ and racism, critical race theory, decolonial theory and the sociology of reproduction. She uses a range of methodologies, including digital ethnography, critical auto-ethnography critical techno-cultural discourse analysis, policy analysis and archival research. 

Research Projects

Isabelle is currently focused on developing, extending and publishing her PhD research, which explored how children deemed eligible for adoption in the USA are represented and monetised by a range of digital ‘adoption advocates’, including governments, private adoption agencies and adoptive parents. Her work shows that the everyday realities experienced by children in the US adoption process are shaped by the intersections of racial, reproductive and digital forms of structural injustice.  

Isabelle also held a postdoctoral research position in 'Digital Wellness and Disinformation' for the ESRC funded Digital Good Network, based at the University of Sheffield. She worked with Dr Jonathan Corpus Ong at the University of Massachusetts Amherst on research that complicates commonly held understandings of the digital ‘rabbit holes’ that connect digital wellness, conspiracy theories and far-right ideologies. 

During the 2023 – 2024 academic year, Isabelle led a project to scope ‘decolonisation’ efforts across the collegiate university, working with four student researchers to do so. This work was funded by the Alexander Crummell Fund and the APP PAR project within the Cambridge Centre for Teaching and Learning.  

Teaching

Isabelle's teaching is driven by her passion for inspiring critical thinking and justice-oriented action through scholarship. In the 2024 – 2025 academic year, her teaching practice will include:  

  • Designing and delivering lectures for Soc1 (Introduction to Sociology) and Soc2 (Social Theory)  
  • Supervising students taking Soc4 (Concepts and Arguments)  
  • Supervising MPhil Media and Cultural Sociology students for their dissertations.  
  • Designing and delivering a series of lectures and workshops on ‘Decoloniality in Research Methods’ for Cambridge Research Methods  

For the 2023 – 2024 academic year, Isabelle held a teaching fellowship with the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, University of Cambridge. Her work there involved supervising assessed essays and dissertations for students undertaking the MSt in ‘AI Ethics and Society’, and delivering seminars and discussion groups for Module 3: Theories and Methods for AI Ethics and Society.  

In previous years (as a graduate student), Isabelle’s teaching has included:  

  • Supervising over 70 undergraduate students on the following papers: SOC1: Introduction to Sociology, SOC3: Global Social Problems, SOC7: Media, culture and society, SOC11: Racism, ‘Race’ & Ethnicity, Sociology Undergraduate Dissertations 
  • Designing and delivering guest lectures for undergraduates and the Sociology Department's MPhil in the Sociology of Marginality and Exclusion. 
  •  Leading on the design and provision for undergraduate Sociology study skills seminars and workshops. 
  • Providing peer-led training for the School of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences on Decoloniality and Reflexivity in Research (SHARE summer school, 2021; AHSS training for doctoral students, Michaelmas term 2021). 
  • Designing and running a six session supervision course, titled ‘Digital Sociology & the World today’, for Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge Higher Aspirations Scheme (November 2020 – May 2021). 
  • Working with the University of Cambridge's Widening Participation team to provide introductory materials on Digital Sociology and Inequality for secondary school students. 
  • Holding a Methods Fellowship with Cambridge Digital Humanities and designing and delivering teaching on 'critical, intersectional and decolonial digital methods' for graduate students and staff. 
  • Designing and delivered the University of Cambridge’s Social Science Research Method’s Programme first course on ‘Decoloniality in Social Science Research Methods’ 
  • Holding a Special Supervisor position with Lucy Cavendish College 

Isabelle’s pedagogical approach was recognised by the University of Cambridge’s Student Led Teaching Awards, where she was nominated and shortlisted for the award in Inclusive Practice in 2022. 

Publications

Isabelle’s teaching practice has led to two monographs currently under contract: 

  • 'Decoloniality in Research Methods: Considering Approaches and Practical Application', to be published by Bloomsbury Academic Press 

  •  'Teaching and Learning in a Context of Coloniality: Reflections from an 'elite' institutional setting', to be published by Emerald’s series on 'Critical Studies in Inclusion, Practice, and Impact'. 

 

Higgins, I. (2024, forthcoming) “Bodies of Children in the Archive: Realities of Recognition and Resistance” in Decolonizing Bodies, Eds. C Ureña & S Varma; Bloomsbury Academic Press.

 

Higgins, I. (2023). Classified children: A critical analysis of the digital interfaces and representations that mediate adoption in the United States. New Media & Society, https://doi.org/10.1177/14614448231156852

Isabelle has further articles under review and forthcoming.

Awards

2024 - 2025: Tech Policy Fellowship, Goldman School of Public Policy, University of California Berkeley.

2024: Student-Staff Partnership Award, Staff and Educational Development Association (awarded for leading a funded research project within the University with a team of four student researchers)  

2022: Arts and Humanities Research Council Fellow, John W. Kluge Center, Library of Congress, Washington DC (funded 6-month research fellowship) 

2022: Institute for Critical Social Enquiry Fellow, New School for Social Research, New York 

2022: Shortlisted Candidate, ‘Inclusive Teaching and Learning’, Student Led Teaching Awards, University of Cambridge (shortlisted from over 400 student nominations)  

2021 – 2022: Methods Fellow, Cambridge Digital Humanities, University of Cambridge   

2020 Polity Prize, best MPhil Dissertation, Department of Sociology, University of Cambridge  

2019 – 2023: 1+3 Economic and Social Research Council Doctoral Training Partnership Studentship with Pembroke College 

2019 – 2020: Honorary Cambridge Trust Scholar, University of Cambridge  

2019: Myson College Exhibition for Personal Achievement, Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge (awarded annually to one student)  

2017 & 2019: Marie Lawrence Prize for First Class Honors, Lucy Cavendish College, University of Cambridge (awarded for results of Part I and Part IIB examinations)      

2017: Winifred Georgina Holgate Pollard Memorial Prize, University of Cambridge (awarded for scoring first in an examination cohort of 181 students)  

2017: US State Department & Fulbright Commission, Study of the US Institutes on Civic Engagement (the sole UK candidate to be awarded place as one of 22 student leaders from across Europe)  

Job Title:
Teaching Associate in Sociology (Media, Culture and Sociological Theory), Pembroke College
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