Dr Isabelle Higgins is a Teaching Associate in Media and Culture and Sociological Theory. Isabelle is interested in studying empirical sites in which emerging forms of technology are made sense of and used by people in their everyday lives. She draws on a range of social theory to critically interrogate the power relations and expressions of social inequality that are reflected, refracted, reproduced or challenged in such empirical locations.
Isabelle studied for her PhD, MPhil, and undergraduate degrees at the Department of Sociology, University of Cambridge. She has received of a range of awards and fellowships at all stages of her studies. Currently, Isabelle holds a Tech Policy Fellowship at the University of California Berkeley, where she is exploring the policy implications that emerge from her empirical PhD research and subsequent thinking on Generative AI technologies.
Research Interests
Isabelle’s PhD research explored how the design and use of the internet is affecting the adoption of children in the USA. This include looking at government run ‘photo listings’ in which information about children in state care is shared online in the public domain, as well as social media representation and monetisation practices carried out by private adoption agencies and adoptive parents who work as social media influencers. To interrogate these realities, Isabelle 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 sociology, ultimately showing that the work of self-described ‘adoption advocates’ reproduces intersectionally racialised forms of structural inequality with long histories. Isabelle is working currently on adapting this research to incorporate consideration of the capacities and uses of generative AI technologies.
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 includes:
• Designing and delivering lectures and supervisions for Soc1 (Introduction to Sociology), Soc2 (Social Theory) and Soc7 (The Sociology of Media and Culture)
• 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.
Isabelle is committed to extending her teaching practice beyond formal academic settings: most recently, for example, presenting at OCR’s Sociology Subject Forum for A Level Sociology and co-running a ‘Practice-Lab’ at the Fitzwilliam Museum’s ‘Late’ event, open the public.
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. In 2024, she received a Student-Staff Partnership Award, from the Staff and Educational Development Association, for her collaborative work with students. Isabelle very much values the opportunity to connect and learn from the students she works with, and encourages any students interested in her work to be in touch by email.
Publications
Isabelle’s teaching practice has led to two monographs currently under contract:
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'Decoloniality in Research Methods: Considering Approaches and Practical Application', to be published by Bloomsbury Academic Press
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'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. (2025) “Bodies of Children in the Archive: Realities of Recognition and Resistance” in Decolonizing Bodies, Eds. C Ureña & S Varma; Bloomsbury Academic Press.
Higgins, I. (2024). '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.
Research Groups & Affiliations
Associate, Cambridge Digital Humanities
Affiliate, Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy
Sociology of AI
Decolonise Sociology
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)
