My research sits at the intersection of psychology and data science, developing methods to understand how digital technologies are reshaping human behaviour.

With peer-reviewed publications spanning psychology, medicine, computer science, and public health, I am ranked among the top 2% of researchers worldwide in my field. My work is interdisciplinary: projects have involved civil servants, NHS clinicians, patients, technology entrepreneurs, and members of the public, with findings regularly covered by the BBC, ITV, and international media.

Much of this research has direct policy relevance. I served as Project Lead for REPHRAIN — the UK's national research centre on privacy, harm reduction, and adversarial influence online — and have contributed to NICE guidelines, NHS interventions, and UK Government reporting on digital technology. I was previously a member of the UKRI Interdisciplinary Assessment College and hold an Honorary Chair at the University of Lincoln.

Alongside this, I am committed to improving how science itself is conducted. As Chair of the Social Sciences Research Ethics Committee and a former Local Network Lead for the UK Reproducibility Network, I work to embed open and reproducible research practices across disciplines, including influencing editorial policies at major journals and institutional promotion criteria.

Responsible Research Assessment Working Group - Member

Open Research Steering Group - Member

Research Culture Steering Group - Member

Social Sciences Research Ethics Committee - Chair

Academic Ethics and Integrity Committee - Ex-officio Member

Healthy Later Living Network – Academic Member

I'm a Senior Fellow of Advance HE and have taught extensively at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. This includes the development and delivery of MSc and BSc programs that often bridge the gap between management, psychology, and computational social science. Where relevant, I've aimed to integrate and highlight the importance of open research practices across teaching and research. This often reveals a variety of methodological, statistical, and systematic issues that impair the robustness of scientific claims we encounter every day.

Underpinning much of this teaching is the supervision and mentoring of research students and staff. Having published papers with undergraduate and postgraduate students, I have also co-authored teaching materials. This includes a number of papers and online resources that can be developed further or modified by others to support their teaching requirements (Ellis & Merdian, 2018; Ellis & Merdian, 2015). Some of this has appeared as part of a Research Topic in Frontiers in Psychology entitled: Research methods pedagogy: Engaging students in research methods and statistics.

Graduates or undergraduates who wish to undertake research in his lab or in conjunction with associated groups are welcome to contact David directly.