Ben Williamson

Dr Ben Williamson is a Senior Lecturer and Co-Director of the Centre for Research in Digital Education at the Moray House School of Education and Sport, University of Edinburgh. His research examines the connections between digital technologies, data practices, and education policy, practice and governance. Recent and current research projects explore data-intensive biology in education and sociodigital learning futures. Ben is the author of Big Data in Education: The digital future of learning, policy and practice, an editor of the World Yearbook of Education 2024: Digitalisation of Education in the Era of Algorithms, Automation and Artificial Intelligence, and a co-editor of the journal Learning, Media and Technology.

The birth of the bio-edu-data-sciences: biology, data, and the consequences for educational research, policy and practice

Technical and methodological advances in the genetic and brain sciences are being adopted by scientists studying the biological underpinnings of learning and educational outcomes. Enabled by highly computational and data-intensive genomics software and neurotechnologies, studies of educational genomics and neuroscience are recentring human biology as an object of analysis with relevance for educational research and policy. It is important for the field of educational research to understand these data-driven biological sciences-in-the-making and their consequences. Expertise in bio-edu-data-science is emerging as a source of knowledge with claims to policy-relevant authority, promoting techno-scientific research practices that resemble “big biology” and proposing policy implications that centre biological knowledge as the basis for educational interventions in practice settings. In the presentation I examine how the bio-edu-data-sciences are emerging and attaining authority as sources of educational expertise through three steps: (1) Infrastructure construction: building large-scale scientific and multisector alliances that are enabled by the availability of digital data banks, shared conceptual repertoires, and advanced biotechnologies; (2) Knowledge production: enacting data-centric methodologies that privilege data mining bioinformational “big data” in the construction of new knowledge about the biological substrates of learning outcomes; (3) Policy translation: the mobilization of new biological knowledge as the basis for genomically- and neuro-informed education policy and practice, projecting bodies and brains as the objects for forms of experimental intervention. As the bio-edu-data-sciences continue to develop evidence of the genetic and neural aspects of learning and educational outcomes, will they complement and advance, or displace and marginalize existing practices of educational research? What futures of educational research do the bio-edu-data sciences suggest lay ahead in the next decade, and what should be done about it? The presentation is based on a three-year study supported by a Research project Grant from The Leverhulme Trust (grant ref: RPG-2020-0395).

Upcoming ECERs

Title
08.09.2025
ECER'25, Belgrade
17.08.2026
ECER'26, Tampere
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Important Dates ECER 2025

Title
01.12.2024
Submission starts
31.01.2025
Submission ends
01.04.2025
Registration starts
01.04.2025
Review results announced
15.05.2025
Early bird ends
25.06.2025
Presentation times announced
30.06.2025
Registration Deadline for Presenters
08.09.2025
ERC First Day
09.09.2025
ECER First Day
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Conference Venue

Main Building (Check-in etc):
University of Belgrade
Faculty of Philology
Studentski trg 3
Belgrade

Ed Research in Serbia

While preapring for ECER 2025, read the Blog Post introducing some specifics of educational research in Serbia.
Towards reconnecting within and beyond the educational research community in Serbia

Want to know which research was trending during ECER? Use EduTopics to find insights!
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