
Other affiliations
Phone
01865 284230
Biography
Kira Allmann is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Media Law and Policy at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies. Her current research focuses on digital inequality — how the ubiquitous digitization of our everyday lives is leaving people behind and what people are doing to fix it at a grassroots level. As the internet becomes increasingly essential to the fulfillment of a well-rounded human life, exclusion from the internet due to lack of access or literacy exacerbates other forms of gender-based, racial, geographic, and socio-economic marginalization and disenfranchisement. As an anthropologist, Kira uses ethnographic methods with people who are closing the digital divide from the bottom up, in their communities. She runs two research projects: (1) understanding the human geography of community networks (internet networks owned and operated by local communities) and (2) examining the role of public libraries in providing free digital services. Her work aims at developing more human-centered approaches to and policies for access to technology.
Kira is also the Communications Director at the Oxford Human Rights Hub and a research partner of the Whose Knowledge? campaign, which works to center the knowledge of marginalized communities on the web and raise awareness of the digital exclusions that keep the majority of the world from participating fully in digital knowledge creation and curation.
She completed her DPhil at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, where her dissertation focused on how mobility between online and offline spaces constituted a practice of resistance during and after the 2011 Egyptian revolution. Between 2011 and 2015, Kira conducted ethnographic research in Egypt, blending online and offline qualitative methods, to investigate how the use of digital technologies by Egyptian youth were transforming virtual and physical spaces in the city of Cairo.
Education
DPhil, Oriental Studies (Islamic World), University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
MPhil (with Distinction), Modern Middle Eastern Studies, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
BA, Government and Linguistics, The College of William and Mary, Virginia, USA
Twitter: @KiraAllmann
Publications
Report (1)
Internet Publication (7)
Other (1)
Review (1)
Journal Article (1)
Centres
Research programmes
Research projects
Research Interests
- Community internet networks
- Autonomous infrastructure
- Human rights in the information society
- Environmental impact of digital technologies
- Political economy of information and communication technologies (especially in the Middle East and North Africa)
- Class and mobility between the online and the offline (especially in the Middle East and North Africa)
- 2011 Egyptian revolution and counter-revolution
News articles for Kira Allmann

*NEW* OxHRH podcast episode: Police Brutality in the United States (with Shea Streeter)
podcast

*NEW* OxHRH podcast episode: Racial Hierarchy and Role of Whiteness (with Savala Trepczynski)
podcast

*NEW* OxHRH Podcast Episode: A Decolonial Approach to Education and the Law (with Dr Foluke Adebisi)
podcast

*NEW* OxHRH Podcast Episode: The Voice of Hong Kong in Exile (with Nathan Law)
podcast

*NEW* OxHRH Podcast Episode: The Transformative Possibilities of a Constitution (with Joel Modiri and Gautam Bhatia)
podcast

*NEW* OxHRH Podcast Available: The Internet, Climate Change, and Human Rights (with Michael Oghia)
podcast

New OxHRH podcast episode - The Politics of Global Health Data (with Sara Davis)
podcast

New OxHRH podcast episode - A Reason for Hope: The Pursuit of Restorative Justice in Colombia (with Judge Julieta Lemaitre)
podcast

New OxHRH podcast episode - The Impact of Covid-19 on Worker's Rights in the UK (with Michael Ford, QC)
podcast

New OxHRH podcast episode - The Need for Empathy: Understanding India's COVID-19 Lockdown (with Kalpana Kannabiran)
podcast

New OxHRH podcast episode - Re-writing Chile's Constitution for Human Rights (with Nicolás Espejo Yaksic)
podcast

New OxHRH podcast episode - Defending Human Rights During a the Covid-19 Pandemic (with Luisa Cabal, UNAIDS)
podcast

OxHRH Celebrates International Women's Day 2020: Spotlighting the Work of OxHRH Women

New OxHRH podcast: Comparative Human Rights Law Book Launch - Sandy Fredman in Conversation with Edwin Cameron
podcast

New OxHRH Podcast: Comparative Human Rights Law Book Launch - Sandy Fredman in Conversation with Justice S. Muralidhar
podcast

CSLS postdoc Dr Kira Allmann interviews Sol Luca de Tena, acting CEO of Zenzeleni community networks, for GenderIT

The Impact of New and Emerging Internet Technologies on Climate Change and Human Rights: Submission to the Advisory Committee to the UN Human Rights Council

Learning Lessons from Litigators: Realising the Right to Education Through Public Interest Lawyering

Kira Allman awarded a knowledge exchange seed fund grant

Sandy Fredman leads new research project to develop a human rights approach to sexual and reproductive health
Pages
Blog posts by Kira Allmann

Reflecting on our research design: collecting data on digital services at Oxford libraries
By Kira Allmann
The Oxfordshire Digital Inclusion Project
Covid-19 is increasing digital inequality: We need human connectivity to close the digital divide
By Kira Allmann
The Oxfordshire Digital Inclusion Project
RightsUp #RightNow - A No-Man's Land of Justice: Holding Corporations Accountable for Human Rights
By Kira Allmann, Centre for Socio-Legal Studies
Oxford Business Law Blog