Dr Miranda Imperial is a research affiliate at the Department of Sociology, having recently completed her PhD.
Miranda’s PhD focused on the intersection between social movements, nationalism and social media. Her thesis analyses new developments and changes in activism practices within the domain of contentious politics and pro-independence movements. Concretely, this research saught to hone in to the identities of groups spurring these movements and to understand their conceptualisation of the changes in their involvement and activism within the wider context of social media mobilisation. To this effect, Miranda undertook quantitative social media analysis of Twitter communications in the form of a network analysis to understand the connections and relationships between nodes in the movement, followed by a qualitative study of frames used by activists.
This investigation saught to present an exhaustive perspective on the interaction between grassroots movements and institutions in a democracy in disagreement, commenting on activists' ideas on democratic decision-making, consensus-building and self-governance.
Miranda also holds a BA in Human, Social and Political Sciences from the University of Cambridge (2018) and a MSc in Politics and Communication from the London School of Economics (2019).
She has undertaken research at The South Asian Feminist Activist Archive (University of Wisconsin-Madison, Department of Gender Studies), where she analysed material associated with participating NGOs and worked with metadata in the UW digital archives. Outside of academia, Miranda has professional experience within NGOs stemming from her interest in social movements and issue-based activism. Her work with Cancer Research UK and Alianza por la Solidaridad (Spain) has inspired her to continue researching social dynamics and harnessing theory and practise for radical change.
