Dr Stephanie Diepeveen

Alumni

Dr Stephanie Diepeveen was a Research Associate with the Bennett Institute. Her work focuses on the social and political implications of an increasingly digital world. She is interested in questions about power and value and how these materialise across changing media and spaces. She predominantly explores these questions from a vantage from the African continent as a means towards a more global and nuanced understanding of how digital technology matters to politics.

Currently, Stephanie is involved in a series of collaborative research projects that take an interdisciplinary look at the structure and dynamics of digitally-mediated publics. This includes co-leading a mixed method study into the role of social media in shaping debates around COVID-19 in Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa. She is also a founding member of a network of researchers, technicians and activists on the effect of datafication processes on everyday publics and financial services in East Africa.

Stephanie has published numerous articles including as co-editor of a special issue on digital publics in the Journal of Eastern African Studies, as well as in Journal of Modern African Studies, Journal of Press/Politics, and Development Policy Review. Her recent book Searching for a New Kenya: Politics and Social Media on the Streets of Mombasa investigates the democratic value of street-based and online public debates.

Stephanie is also a Research Fellow at ODI, working in the area of digitalisation and politics. Previously, Stephanie worked as an Evaluation Lead at UKRI, and a research analyst at RAND Europe, focusing on policy-oriented research in the areas of research evaluation, institution building and social policy. Stephanie has a PhD in Politics and International Studies from the University of Cambridge, an MPhil in Development Studies from the University of Cambridge, and a BAH in History and Global Development Studies from Queen’s University, Canada.

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