Jo Edson Ferrie

Professor Jo Edson Ferrie is Professor of Sociology in the School of Social & Political Sciences and Associate Dean of Skill and Method at the University of Glasgow.

Jo has worked closely with civil society to realise human rights, co-founding and serving as Chair of the Board of Trustees for Making Rights Real and both the Research Advisory Group and Human Rights Budgeting Group for the Scottish Human Rights Commission. 

Jo is the founding Director of Glasgow Q-Step, and was lead author on the independent review of Data-driven Research Skills, with Technopolis and colleagues, which underpinned the recommissioning of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Doctoral Training Partnerships 2023-2029, as part of the review of the PhD in the Social Sciences project. Jo is also the lead of the Emotionally Demanding Research Network. She has written on the need to embed care and respect into methods training and recently co-produced a new Ethics Committee dedicated to Scholarship of Learning and Teaching at Glasgow.

Jo served as Deputy Director (Training) at the Scottish Graduate School of Social Sciences, Scotland’s Doctoral Training Partnership (DTP) from 2017-2024, and was part of the small team that successfully secured £32 million funding to support post-graduate education via DTP2. Jo also sits on the ESRC’s Data and Infrastructure, Skills and Methods Expert Advisory Group.

Meet our other Smart Data Research UK programme board members.