Professor Birchall is the author of Radical Secrecy: The Ends of Transparency in Datafied America, Shareveillance: The Dangers of Openly Sharing and Covertly Collecting Data, and Knowledge Goes Pop: From Conspiracy Theory to Gossip. She is the co-author of Conspiracy Theories in the Time of Covid-19 .
Her research is concerned with contested knowledges, the politics of visibilities, surveillance and digital culture. Professor Birchall recently worked on an AHRC-funded research grant on Covid-19 conspiracy theories (2020-1), is the Co-I on a 3-year AHRC-funded project on what difference the internet has made to conspiracy theories (2021-4), and is leading a 3-year CHANSE funded European wide project called Researching Europe, Digitalisation, and Conspiracy Theories (2022-5).
She was part of a 5-year EU-COST funded research network on Conspiracy Theories as well as an ESRC-funded series of research seminars on privacy issues entitled ‘Debating and Assessing Transparency Arrangements - Privacy, Security, Surveillance, Trust’.