Professor Paul Luff

Paul Luff is a Professor in Organisations and Technology at King's Business School. His research draws on video-based ethnography to understand work practices with technologies in a range of settings. These studies include complex, often sensitive work environments including those in the health sector, the financial industries and in control rooms.

In these projects Paul collaborates with researchers, designers and developers of innovative technologies including artificial intelligence, robotics, video-mediated systems and augmented technologies and robotics. His research contributes to understanding the challenges and opportunities for designing and deploying novel technologies in work settings as well as supporting the development of novel methods for prototype systems.

In his current projects, Paul is:

• collaborating with researchers in Informatics to develop ways for artificial intelligence systems to produce explanations of their own behaviour and ways of assessing these explanations;
• commencing studies with partners at Guy’s about how clinical teams collaborate to accomplish surgical operations that are assisted by robots;
• analysing how participants in very large control rooms collaborate with and through a range of technologies to make sense of problems and deploy effective solutions; and
• working with colleagues in the WIT Group to analyse how activities, like auctions, are transformed when they are partly accomplished online.

Paul has co-ordinated a number of interdisciplinary projects and received grants from the ESRC, EPSRC and the EU. His current research focusses on artificial intelligence and robotics. He is collaborating with colleagues in Informatics and Law to investigate Trust in Human-Machine Partnerships and with others at King’s and at the universities of Southampton and Nottingham on the Trusted Autonomous Systems (TAS) Hub. He has recently started projects on the Hub related to robot-assisted surgery and autonomous vehicles. Paul is also one of the Business School representative in the newly formed King’s AI Institute.

Paul's research focuses on the collaborative and social accomplishment of work practices. He is the co-author of ‘Technology in Action’ (with Christian Heath) and ‘Video in Qualitative Research’ (with Christian Heath and Jon Hindmarsh). He has contributed to over 70 peer-reviewed articles and 35 book chapters. Google H-index: 47 with over 14500 citations. As well as publishing social science fields, Paul also collaborates on papers and articles in other fields, in particular Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Computer-Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW and in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. In 2017 Paul won the CSCW Lasting Impact Award for his paper) ‘Mobility in Collaboration’ (written with Professor Christian Heath.

His current areas of research involve:

• Undertaking video-based studies of activities and interactions of participants in the workplace, ranging from offices to complex settings such as control centres, trading rooms and surgical operations;
• Drawing on detailed studies of talk and visual conduct to understand how artefacts whether these are complex tools or simple implements, serve to support the accomplishment of everyday work;
• Undertaking studies of advanced prototype technologies, including advanced video-mediated communication, artificial intelligence systems and robotics, to assess their potential benefits and challenges for future innovation and deployment;
• Developing qualitative methods for assessing advanced technologies;
• Collaborating with computer scientists and engineers to develop technologies that are useful and appropriate to support work activities.

Professor Paul Luff teaches the second year option on the BSc in Business Management and KBS+ on Technology and Innovation.

Are you currently accepting new PhD students?

Yes