Paul Ord

Profile

Biography

I began my PhD Sociology at York in September 2024. My ESRC funded project explores the influence of algorithmic technologies - social media, search engines and fertility apps, for example - on women's remembrance practices after miscarriage. Supervised by Professor Ruth Penfold-Mounce and Dr Ben Jacobsen, my work examines how these complex and 'intelligent' technologies intersect with, firstly, women's embodied experience of miscarriage, and secondly, the ways in which they come to remember, or grieve for, a lost pregnancy or child.

Before starting my PhD I completed an MA in Social Research at the University of York. Here I gained a distinction, and was awarded Highest Achieving MA Social Research Student 2023/2024. I hold a further MA in Cultural History, Memory and Identity, also at Distinction level, from the University of Brighton. 

Research

Overview

My research draws on literature from within a broad range of complementary fields, including the sociology of death, dying and bereavement, critical algorithm studies, and posthuman ontologies. I am particularly fascinated by the role of cultural artefacts, technologies and infrastructures in the construction of human memory, and in the enactment of biopolitical power in society. I have presented my developing PhD research at a number of academic conferences including: Innovation at the End of Life (Centre for Death and Society, University of Bath, 2023), Death Futures (Death Online Research Network, University of Northumbria, 2023), Death, Dying and Disposal 17 (Association for the Study of Death and Society, Utrecht University, 2024), and New Directions in Miscarriage Research: Interdisciplinary, Intersectional and Full-Spectrum Perspectives (The Feminist Miscarriage Project, University of Loughborough, 2026). 

Teaching

Overview

I have taught as a Graduate Teaching Assistant on the BA Sociology modules Becoming a Social Researcher, Investigating Social Problems, and Theorising the Social World.