My research explores how people create and sustain intimacy — both with one another and with intelligent technologies. I am particularly interested in how generative AI is reshaping ideas of the self, relationships, and what it means to be human.

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I am currently working on a new book project, Intelligent Artifice, which examines emerging forms of human–AI intimacy. This includes romantic relationships with AI companions, the use of AI in therapeutic settings, and technologies that allow people to recreate or maintain connections with deceased loved ones. Through this work, I explore how these systems are not simply tools, but participants in social life — reconfiguring how we understand personhood, care, memory, and connection.

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Alongside this, I have conducted research on the use of machine learning in UK local government, where I examined how algorithmic systems are used in children’s welfare. This work shows how social and cultural assumptions — particularly around family and kinship — become embedded within technical systems, shaping how care and responsibility are understood and enacted.

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Beyond my work on AI, I have spent over a decade conducting ethnographic fieldwork in Cuba, focusing on the informal economy, digital media, kinship, and morality. I am currently finalising another book, Speculative Futures, which traces the transformation of Cuba’s property market from the Revolution to the present, exploring how shifting economic conditions are entangled with changing moral understandings of value, ownership, and obligation.

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I completed my PhD at University College London in 2020, and have since held academic positions at the University of Manchester, UCL, and KU Leuven. I have published widely on digital culture, technology, and social life, and my work is grounded in a broader anthropological interest in value, kinship, and personhood across different cultural contexts.