Dr. Mark Wong joined the University of Glasgow as a Lecturer (also known as, Assistant Professor in Hong Kong/US) in Social and Public Policy in 2017.

He is currently the Programme Director of UG Social and Public Policy. He is also part of a team, as Co-Investigator, which has recently won an EPSRC Standard Grant for the MultilayerALGS project. He will be leading innovations in social data science and working with an cross-college interdisciplinary team at University of Glasgow and University of Edinburgh to develop uses of advanced network algorithms to analyse online social networks.

Mark completed his PhD in Social Policy at the University of Edinburgh and his work explored the importance of technologies and online connections for disengaged young people (“hidden youth”) in Hong Kong and Scotland. 

His current research focuses on marginalised youth, inequalities and precarity, and the impact of technology on society and social networks in the digital age.

He is interested in the role and importance of digital interactions and online communities for young people and individuals who are marginalised in society. His research focuses on exploring this issue in the changing global context dominated by insecurity and precarity and to understand people's lived experiences. More broadly, Mark's work addresses questions on how digital transformations influence experiences of human connections and functions of social networks, and how this relates to shifts within online and offline environments of social interactions.

In Mark's recent work, he argues online connections and social networks have become especially important to those who are marginalised. His work has been published in several top international peer-review journals, and most recently, his forthcoming article on this issue is to be published in a special issue of New Media & Society.

Mark's research has also contributed to public awareness on the issue of "hidden youth", including through several news reports on his research, e.g. The Sunday Times, The Times Scotland, and BBC Radio Scotland. He was interviewed by the BBC Radio Scotland's prime national news programme, Good Morning Scotland, in May 2018.

Methodologically, Mark is interested and has been involved in several research projects working with advanced digital research methods, including data science, "big data" analytics, Social Network Analysis (SNA), network visualisations, social media data (e.g. twitter), data linkage, and bibliometrics.

He is currently the co-convenor of the cross-institutional research network in Scotland for Social Network Analysis research, the Social Network Analysis in Scotland (SNAS) group. Find out more information about the group and our monthly seminar series here. He is also part of the new Social and Digital Change group at University of Glasgow.

Mark has acted as a peer reviewer for leading international peer-review journals, such as "New Media and Society" and "Journal of Social Policy". He also had recent success in winning funding in the ESRC supervisor-led studentship competition (with Dr. Sharon Wright), for a doctoral project on "Young people's lived experiences of welfare conditionality over time" and the UofG-UoE joint Phd studentship supervisor-led competition (Future Cities). 

Past Experience

Prior to joining Glasgow, he was part of a research project, TRANSGENE, funded by the European Research Council at the University of Edinburgh. He has acted as an external collaborator for the project in 2019. Through this project, he contributed to developing innovative methods to examine collaborative networks in genomics and analysed co-authorship networks using linked data. He also utilised advanced technique in the programming environment, R, including working with automation and Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).

Mark was a Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI, Cambridge, UK) in March 2017. Between 2012 and 2014, he worked in a research project looking at pre-drinking and friendship networks using Twitter data. He was also previously involved in a project studying ethical practices in scientific publications.

In teaching and learning, Mark has a range of experiences in teaching social policy (particularly youth policy), research design, network analysis and visualisations for various UK institutions and academic networks.

Teaching and Learning

He is currently the Undergraduate Convenor/Director of the UG Social and Public Policy programme in Urban Studies at the University of Glasgow. He also acts as the UG Honours Convenor, Assessment Officer, and Exchange Co-ordinator of the SPP Programme.

Mark is involved in Project Mobius, funded by Innovate UK, to promote the use of Virtual Reality (VR) technology in teaching and learning and gaining insights on how student learn in VR environments. He acts as one of the ten Champions of the project at the University of Glasgow and is currently involved in developing a VR app for learning of data landscapes and analytics of housing and health data visualised in an immersive VR environment.  

In 2019-20, he is a co-lead for a scholarship project to evaluate uses of online assessments and feedback for the School of Social and Political Sciences at UofG.

• Youth, marginalisation, and disengagement
• Digital society, social networks and human connections in the "digital age"
• Data science, "big data" analytics, data linkage, automation and APIs (particularly in R)
• Social Network Analysis and network visualisations
• Youth policies and welfare in Hong Kong/Scotland

List by: Type | Date

• EPSRC Standard Grant, Multilayer Algorithmics to Leverage Graph Structure (MultilayerALGS), Co-Investigator, with Meeks K. (co-PI), Enright J. (co-PI), Lee D. and Guo H. (£760,000)
  https://gow.epsrc.ukri.org/NGBOViewGrant.aspx?GrantRef=EP/T004878/1

• Urban Studies Research Incentivisation Funds 2017-18 (organising the "Research Youth in the Digital Age Workshop" Series, including a hackathon style event and mini-symposium) (£1700)

• ESRC supervisor-led studentship competition (with Dr. Sharon Wright), for a doctoral project on "Young people's lived experiences of welfare conditionality over time"
  (see: https://www.sgsss.ac.uk/studentship/young-peoples-lived-experiences-of-welfare-conditionality-over-time/)

• UofG-UoE Future Cities supervisor-led PhD studentship competition, "Mapping Urban Inequalities with Tools for Temporally Evolving Netweorks", with Dr. Kitty Meeks, UofG Computer Science and Dr. Gil Viry, Sociology at University of Edinburgh.

• PGT in Urban Studies (including Public Policy, Housing Studies, and Real Estate and Regeneration) 
• UG Social and Public Policy
• PhD - topics interested to supervise include:
• • Youth, marginalisation, and inequality
  • Digital society, social networks and socialconnections in the "digital age"
  • Data science, "big data" analytics (e.g. social media data),  automation and APIs
  • Social Network Analysis and network visualisations
  • Youth policies and welfare in Hong Kong/Scotland

• UG Convenor/UG SPP Programme Director
• UG SPP Honours Convenor
• UG SPP Exchange Co-ordinator
• UG SPP Assessment Officer

Semester 1

• Youth, Policy and Welfare: Cross-Cultural Perspectives (New course designed by Dr. Mark Wong, starting in 2018-19)
• Social & Public Policy 1A (Lectures on: Disease/Health Inequality)

Semester 2

• Social and Public Policy 2B: Policy, Politics and Power (Course Convwnor 18-19, Lectures on youth)
• Health Policy (Course Convenor, 2018-19)
• Social and Public Policy 1B: Understanding Glasgow in a Globalised World (Lectures on public health)
• PGT Dissertations

• Utopias: Welfare Theory and Social Policies for a "Good Society" - Honours (Course Convenor, 2017-2018)

Academic Services

Mark is the co-covenor of the Social Network Analysis in Scotland research group (SNAS). SNAS is a cross-institutional network of researchers, from various backgrounds and disciplines, who are interested in applying SNA to research projects and real-life issues.

You can find out more information about the group and our monthly seminar series.