Dr Jun Zhang
MSc (Sheffield), PhD (Sheffield)
Information School
Lecturer in Information Systems


Full contact details
Information School
Regent Court (IS)
211 Portobello
Sheffield
S1 4DP
- Profile
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Prior to joining academia, I had worked briefly as a cartographer in the Chinese mapping and surveying industry on Smart City and Digital Town projects. I embarked on my academic career in 2015 by doing a PhD in Information Systems at the University of Sheffield Information School. After obtaining the degree in late 2020, I continued, in Sheffield, to work on a teaching associate role. In mid 2021 I moved to Edinburgh Napier University as a Lecturer in Urban Innovation at The Business School and a Senior Research Associate at the Unity Lab /Urban Innovation Policy Lab. I came back to the Information School as a Lecturer in October 2022.
University responsibilities
- Employability Officer for Information Management & Information Systems programmes
- Research interests
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The general focus of my research relates to unravelling the social-technical nature of IS innovations and emerging technologies, with attention paid to the power relations between various actors, including citizens, businesses, local governments, and the state. Beyond IS research at the individual and organizational levels, I concentrate on how it is shaped in urban and regional settings. I am particularly interested in understanding and analysing radical innovations through a critical lens. This has included work on critical appraisals of prevailing smart city innovations, such as surveillance, anticipatory governance and urban artificial intelligence, which are primarily focused on what communities and citizens gain from them. Recently, I have begun researching robotic urbanism, exploring citizens' digital rights and skills when facing robotics and autonomous systems.
In light of my research interests, I am particularly interested in supervising PhD candidates in the following areas:
- Socio-technical transitions of ICT-enabled societies
- Digital inequality, digital rights, digital citizenship
- Power dynamics in smart city governance
- Citizen participation and engagement
- Robotic urbanism
I am a member of the Information Systems Research Group.
I am an associate member of Urban Automation and Robotics at University of Sheffield Urban Institute.
- Publications
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Journal articles
- State-steered smartmentality in Chinese smart urbanism. Urban Studies, 59(14), 2933-2950. View this article in WRRO
- Value co-creation in industrial AI: The interactive role of B2B supplier, customer and technology provider. Industrial Marketing Management, 98, 105-114.
- Shaping a smart transportation system for sustainable value co-creation. Information Systems Frontiers. View this article in WRRO
- An architecture for IoT-enabled smart transportation security system: a geospatial approach. IEEE Internet of Things Journal, 8(8), 6205-6213. View this article in WRRO
- Understanding the Use of Heterogenous Data in Tackling Urban Flooding: An Integrative Literature Review. Water, 14(14), 2160-2160.
Dictionary/encyclopaedia entries
Other
- State-steered smartmentality in Chinese smart urbanism. Urban Studies, 59(14), 2933-2950. View this article in WRRO
- Teaching activities
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I contribute to the following modules:
- INF6110 Information Systems Modelling
- INF6001 Information Systems Project Management
- Professional activities and memberships
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- Senior Research Associate in Unity Lab / Urban Innovation Policy Lab, The Business School, Edinburgh Napier University
- Assistant Editor of the Big Data and Society journal