Dr Susan Oman

Profile

I was appointed as Lead for Human-centric AI for the University of Sheffield’s Centre for Machine Intelligence in June 2024. As AI and in/Equality Lead, I champion research, learning and engagement activity from across the university that raises awareness of AI’s role in society - for good and bad. 

Membership

I am a member of the All Party Parliamentary Group on AI, giving evidence in May 2026.

Member of the UK Delegation to the International AI Impact Summit, Delhi in February 2026.

My monograph, Understanding Well-being Data: Improving social and cultural policy, practice and research will be published open access by Palgrave Macmillan in 2021.

University responsibilities

Research, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Lead

Research interests

I research how data and evidence work in practice, looking at particular policy issues, such as well-being, loneliness, inequality and class. My research is situated in the sociology of knowledge and focuses on the role of knowledge in social change. I seek to develop practice and policy-relevant understanding through methodologically rigorous projects that have practical impact in various ways. I achieve this through working with relevant stakeholders, academics and non-academic research partners across the UK and internationally.

I worked on the AHRC-funded projects: Data, diversity and inequality in the creative industries and What constitutes ‘good data’ in the creative economy?. I am co-Investigator on the Living with data project. The Living with data website profiles my research in a section called: How data work in contexts.

I have previously led a systematic review of data and literature for a Wellcome-funded project to investigate subjective well-being as a metric for the cultural sector. During my PhD I was awarded funding from The University of Manchester’s Student Union to lead a project to investigate postgraduate well-being in the institution through qualitative fieldwork and survey re-analysis.

Publications

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Full contact details

Dr Susan Oman
Centre for Machine Intelligence,
D201-207 Central Wing,
Sir Frederick Mappin Building,
Mappin Street,
Sheffield S1 3JD