Jessica Lorimer is a DPhil student in the NEUROSEC team. Jessica holds a BA in Psychology from Occidental College (USA) and an MSc in Developmental Psychology from Maastricht University (Netherlands). Previously, Jessica has worked in NHS and academic libraries, as well as within childhood development and education.

“My research explores how schools use “Ed-Tech” to monitor for suicide risk, focusing on themes of risk and responsibility. In part one of my thesis: People’s real-time, organic digital data can be used as a source of information about their mental health. However, are these new data points and new contexts changing the landscape of suicide risk prediction? Are ADA methods (with school and social media data) an extension of current practice, or something entirely new? In this section I explore the historical and political context of risk, before outlining some core paradigm shifts, including: changing risk indicators, blurring of “diagnoses” and outputs, function creep, directional conflation, and the changing moral implications of risk.

In part two of my thesis, I explore themes of responsibility. Specifically, we know that teachers already have a formalised duty of care and custodianship towards their students’ wellbeing, but do these new monitoring programs change the nature of responsibility? How might a shift of responsibility from clinician to teacher (to Ed-Tech developer) impact our understanding of whether these monitoring systems should be used? How might an integrated/shared model of responsibility (between teacher, developer, and child) work and be used to promote healthcare decision making and the agency of student/service-users? “