Sean Peacock
Doctoral Trainee
My PhD research looks at how digital technologies can support children and young people to make better cities for the future. These groups are often excluded from the way we plan our cities, and I think this is wrong. Prior to this, I worked as an urban planner in local government.
I’ve designed research with young people to understand the issues they face in their neighbourhoods and come up with ways to address these issues, both digital and physical. To achieve this, I’ve worked with groups in primary schools, youth councils and through a children's museum. I’ve designed lots of creative activities, tested out new and old technologies and helped them take action on important local issues. The work we’ve done together has delivered improvements to the environment and generated evidence to support local change. It's also led to the creation of toolkits that have helped generate impact from our work.
Outside of my PhD, I work as a user researcher for the UK Government, designing policy-focused research with people who use the planning system to understand how we might be able to improve it.
Metro Futures: Co-designing the future of Tyne and Wear Metro
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It’s Our Future: putting young people at the centre of building their future
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H2020 gE.CO Living Lab: Tools for generating commons
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Sense Explorers: tools for children to transform the environment
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Sense my Street: A toolkit for data-driven change
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2024
Making sense of 'slippages': re-evaluating ethics for digital research with children and young people
2024 – Children's Geographies
2022
Exploring the Impacts of Educational Simulations on The Development of 21st Century Skills and Sense of Self-Efficacy
2022 – Journal of Political Science Education
2021
Sensing our Streets: Involving Children in Making People-centred Smart Cities
2021 – The Routledge Handbook of Placemaking
2020
Beta Blocks: Inviting playful community exploration of smart city technologies in Boston, USA
2020 – Making Smart Cities More Playable: Exploring Playable Cities
2018
Streets for People: Engaging Children in Placemaking Through a Socio-technical Process
2018 – Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems - Proceedings
2017
onTrack: Mapping Trains Within an Urban Metro Network Through Crowdsensing
2017 –
2016
Transport poverty and urban mobility
2016 – Justice and Fairness in the City: A Multi-Disciplinary Approach to 'Ordinary' Cities