Neighbourhood Signals: Online Discussions and Crime
Neighbourhood Signals: Online Discussions and Crime investigates how everyday online discussion in location-based social networks relates to neighbourhood-level crime patterns. The project is funded by the National Research Centre on Privacy, Harm Reduction and Adversarial Influence Online (REPHRAIN) under the REPHRAIN Safer Streets call (strand 3), with a budget of £23,794.
I am Co-Principal Investigator alongside Dr. Ignacio Castro (QMUL).
The project builds on prior work measuring online manifestations of socio-economic inequality on Nextdoor, including Lady and Tramp Nextdoor: Online Manifestations of Real-World Inequalities in the Nextdoor Social Network (ICWSM 2023).
I am Waleed Iqbal, an Assistant Professor in Data Science at Northeastern University, based at their London Campus.
I also hold positions of Teaching Fellow in Computer Science at the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science, Queen Mary University of London and Associate Lecturer at Arden University London.
I received my PhD in Computer Science under the supervision of Dr. Ignacio Castro and Prof. Gareth Tyson in the Social Data Science (SDS) Lab, Networks Research Group at Queen Mary University of London.
My research interests are broadly in manifestation of socio-economic inequality in online user activity.
Previously, I worked at IHSAN Lab in Information Technology University Lahore, Pakistan, supervised by Prof. Dr. Junaid Qadir as a postgraduate thesis student, affiliated researcher, and teaching assistant.
Since September 2023, I am endorsed and recognised as UK Global Talent (Exceptional Promise) in the Research and Academic Category by the Royal Academy of Engineering UK and granted Global Talent Visa by the Government of the United Kingdom.