Miss Olivia Fletcher

Research Overview

My research broadly sits within social and cultural geographies and critical public health. More specifically, I’m interested in how digital health technologies are experienced in relation to understandings of health and how such technologies blur the distinction between digital and material worlds and embodiments. My previous research has considered the ‘noisy’ and ‘friendly’ forms of surveillance present within the space of a physical activity tracking app and its connections with social media. Within other work I have also explored my own experience of conducting an auto-netnography of my use of an Apple watch. This involved me considering my experience of my own body size, as well as an exploration of the different ways in which my material and digital body became entangled. My PhD has looked at young people’s experiences of self-tracking, focusing on three central themes: health and the body, materiality and everydayness and sociality and surveillance. Theoretically, my work intersects between post-structural theory and feminist new materialism.