Photo of Tasos Spiliotopoulos
I'm a Human-Computer Interaction researcher with a focus on social technologies and human-centered design. I am a Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham in the UK and an Innovation Fellow at the Centre for Digital Citizens. I'm also a SPRITE+ Expert Fellow. In the past, I worked at Newcastle University where I researched trust in the financial industry, and I have also collaborated with the Human Factors Excellence (HuFEx) Research Group at Cardiff University, the Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute (M-ITI, now ITI) in Portugal, the Interactions Lab at UNIST in South Korea, the department of Informatics and Telematics at Harokopio University and the Information Systems Laboratory Research Group at the University of Athens in Greece. I hold a PhD in Human-Computer Interaction from the University of Madeira in Portugal, an MSc in Advanced Information Systems from the University of Athens in Greece and a BSc in Computer Science from the University of Leicester in the UK.

Key topics in my research include privacy, trust, security, human-centered design, computational social science, computer-mediated communication, financial technologies, and digital identities. Areas that my research has focused in the past include locative media, social network analysis, universal design and web accessibility, business entrepreneurship and employability, teleworking and e-government services.


News!

- 08/2023: Our scoping review on "Complex Online Harms and the Smart Home" is now available in the Future Generation Computer Systems journal!
- 05/2023: A lot of travelling and presentations are planned for June! Early in the month I will be at the ICWSM 2023 conference in Limassol presenting our dataset paper on coordinated social media campaigns. In late June I will be at the SPRITE+ conference in Belfast, where I will give two talks; one as a SPRITE+ Expert Fellow discussing crypto-related content on social media, and one discussing preliminary results from our project SMOOTH. The SMOOTH team will also present the project at the CADE 2023 conference.
- 05/2023: Two exciting new projects are starting this month! I am the Principal Investigator for the project SMOOTH: Smoothing the Digital Identity Onboarding Process, where we will examine the potential of physical locations for the support of citizen onboarding to national Digital Identity systems. This is expected to positively shape citizens’ first impression with Digital Identity technologies and, in turn, promote adoption in an inclusive manner. I am also the Co-PI for the internally funded project Tabular Data Under Inference Attacks: An Online Survey on the Public Perception of Privacy, where we will study (the perception of) privacy for tabular data used for Federated Learning.
- 03/2023: Our dataset paper on Coordinated Cryptocurrency-Related Social Media Campaigns was accepted at ICWSM 2023!
- 02/2023: I gave a talk on Human-Centred Design of Digital Identities at the Human-Centred Computing seminar at the University of Birmingham!
- 01/2023: We released a dataset of Coordinated Cryptocurrency-Related Social Media Campaigns. The preprint paper describing the dataset is also available!
- 01/2023: I will participate in the SPRITE+ Sandpit on Future Digital Identity!
- 12/2022: I'm joining the University of Birmingham in January!
- 12/2022: I gave a guest lecture on Data Security and Governance for Blockchain Technologies at Northumbria University!
- 10/2022: Our latest article in the Data & Policy journal examines the use of Digital Identity technologies for the provision of financial services and discusses the tradeoffs between regulatory requirements for the financial industry and the requirements for user privacy!
- 08/2022: How do we select trigger-action rules for smart devices? And how does this affect the security and privacy of smart homes? We answer these questions with two experiments in our latest article in the International Journal of Human-Computer Studies!
- 02/2022: I received a Post-Doctoral Enrichment Award by The Alan Turing Institute to develop a sentiment dictionary for decentralised finance!
- 10/2021: I've joined the Centre for Digital Citizens at Newcastle University as an Innovation Fellow!
- 09/2021: Our poster on "Verifiable Credentials for Financial Inclusion" was presented at the Turing Trustworthy Digital Identity conference!
- 05/2021: I've been awarded a personal grant to investigate the factors that affect investing decisions in Decentralized Finance (DeFi)!
- 04/2021: I'm very excited to participate in the Summer Institute in Computational Social Science in Oxford (SICSS-Oxford) from 14-25 June!
- 04/2021: I will give the talk "Verifiable Credentials for Vulnerable Consumers in Finance" presenting our latest work at the Dynamo 21 conference in June!
- 03/2021: How can digital identities help identify and support vulnerable populations in a privacy-conscious way? Our paper at the Designing for New Forms of Vulnerability workshop at CHI 2021 has more details!
- 03/2021: Our paper on private, secure and conversational chatbots for finance was accepted to the Let's Talk about CUIs: Putting Conversational User Interface Design Into Practice workshop at CHI 2021!
- 03/2021: Our new report on the "Individual Differences In The Adoption, Secure Use, And Exploitation Of Smart Home Technology" for CREST is now available!
- 10/2020: I'm joining Newcastle University Business School in November!
- 07/2020: I successfully defended my PhD thesis! Onwards for new adventures!
- 06/2020: How do Facebook users that also use Twitter differ from Facebook-only users in their motives and behavior? Our forthcoming article "An Exploration of Motives and Behavior across Facebook and Twitter" in the Journal of Systems and Information Technology looks at the differences between these two groups! Get in touch for a pre-print.
- 11/2019: Are social media users rational actors? Short answer: not always. Our latest article "Altruistic and Selfish Communication on Social Media: The Moderating Effects of Tie Strength and Interpersonal Trust" in the Behaviour & Information Technology journal has all the details! Feel free to get in touch for a pre-print.
- 10/2019: I'm joining the Human Factors Excellence (HuFEx) Research Group at Cardiff University in November!