Neil Pollock

Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences

Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Assessor College

Neil Pollock is a Professor of Innovation and Social Informatics. 

Neil joined the University of Edinburgh Business School in 2001. He was previously a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Newcastle and completed his PhD at Lancaster University in 1998. He holds a BSc in Computing (Portsmouth) and an MSc in Science Policy (Sussex). Before commencing his academic career, Neil served in the Royal Air Force. 

Neil teaches courses on digital innovation and has also served (several times) as the Director of the University of Edinburgh Business School's Doctoral Programme. 

He currently works on digital futures, digital innovation, and digital entrepreneurship, and his research sits at the intersection between the disciplines of Information Systems, Organisation Studies, and Science and Technology Studies. His books include Putting the University Online, Software and Organisations, How Industry Analysts Shape the Digital Future, and the edited collections Thinking Infrastructures and Market Studies. He has recently completed a further book After Hype: The Business of Taming the Digital Economy, which will be published by Cambridge University Press and available in June 2026.

Neil has begun a new research project examining the emergence of the AI assurance industry — a field that evaluates artificial intelligence systems for potential harms and risks. The project focuses on the construction and use of assurance instruments designed to make AI accountable, trustworthy, and safe. We will study these instruments in depth, tracing how they are shaped by visions, norms, and practices inherited from more established assurance domains, such as financial auditing and safety certification. I am particularly keen to recruit new PhD students in this exciting area—if you have a research proposal related to this, please get in touch. 

Neil has also been the principal investigator (PI) on many Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) projects, including a prestigious 2-year ESRC fellowship on the 'Social Study of the Information Technology Marketplace'. He has previously uncovered and theorised new forms of market expertise- ' influencer relations ' - through the ESRC project 'ranking the rankers'. He was most recently PI on an ESRC project on digital startups: the Second Most Important Pitch, which addresses an evaluation hurdle that plays a major but unacknowledged role in the growth and scaling of new digital ventures. See the following publications: From Pitching to Briefing and The Valorising Pitch.

Having conducted one of the first ethnographic studies of software development, including carrying out the first participant observation study of the German software giant SAP, Neil is one of the pioneers of the Biography of Artefacts and Practices (BoAP) approach. BoAP is an extended process theory initially developed to study the enterprise resource planning systems used by large firms, but is now being further developed to capture the construction and evolution of algorithmic and artificial intelligence systems. See the following articles: Biography of an algorithm, Method matters in the social study of technology, Moving beyond the single site implementation study and Biographies of Artefacts and Practices. 

Neil has co-organised the annual PhD Colloquium of the European Group of Organisation Studies (EGOS) for the last five years. He was a co-organiser of the 2023 Interdisciplinary Market Studies Workshop (IMSW), which ran in Edinburgh on the topic of Market Futures - Future Markets. He co-founded the ‘Innovation in Information Infrastructures’ (III) conference (now in its 7th edition).

He is deputy editor-in-chief at the journal Information and Organisation and on the editorial boards of Accounting, Organisations and Society and Organization Studies. 

The European Group of Organization Studies recently awarded him the 2022 James G. March Prize for his co-authored article ‘The Biography of an Algorithm’. Neil received a 2023 best paper award for his co-authored article 'Figuring Out IT Markets' in Information and Organization. In 2023, he was recognised as a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.

In addition to his academic roles, Neil is a member of the UK Cabinet Office Advisory Board on Digital, Data, Innovation and AI Skills. He is also a member of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Assessor College.

• Science and Technology Studies
• Economic Sociology
• Information Systems
• Market Studies
• Performativity
• Rankings and rating
• Digital Innovation/disruption
• Industry analysts and analyst relations