👋 Hello there, I’m Kovila!

Welcome to my academic webpage! Here you will find a summary of my research profile and selected publications. For detailed information about my team, opportunities, and service, please visit the separate pages.

Summary

I am an Assistant Professor (Lecturer) in Computer Science and part of the Cybersecurity Group, at King’s College London. Prior to joining King’s in December 2021, I was a tenured research fellow (2017-2021) and prior to that a postdoc, both at Newcastle University, UK.

I care deeply about privacy, security & digital safety that enables and betters people’s lives - across their diverse, colourful and vulnerable experiences. My research is therefore at the intersection of privacy, security, human-computer interaction and social science, and specifically address the following themes:

• Inclusive & Usable Privacy & Security

Privacy, security, digital safety are often designed for majority or WEIRD populations, thereby not appropriately serving all user communities (minority, with specific needs, or life situations), and risk discriminating access and appropriate engagement, while also creating concerns for them. Here my research seeks better privacy/security design with and for these at-risk communities.

• Mitigating Technology-Enabled Harms

There are growing examples of technology originally designed to enhance quality of life being mis-used to facilitate abuse, online harms and in-security. Here I investigate a particular context of technology-enabled harm in intersection with the user characteristic or life event that amplifies the chances of being targeted or in experiencing online harms (e.g. gender, age, life style preference, health condition, breakdown of relationship). I aim to understand the lived experiences of users, make recommendations and prototype for safer/harm-mitigating experiences.

• For detailed topics for PhD or research internship/visitor projects: have a look at my Opportunities page.

Selected Publications:

• IEEE International Conference on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN) 2025: Harvesting Perspectives: A Worker-Centered Inquiry into the Future of Fruit-Picking Farm Robots. By Muhammad Abdul Basit Malik, Martim Brandão, Kovila Coopamootoo. PDF
• ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI) 2024: “We’re Not That Gullible!” Revealing Dark Pattern Mental Models of 11-12-Year-Old Scottish Children. By Karen Renaud, Cigdem Sengul, Kovila Coopamootoo, Bryan Clift, Jacqui Taylor, Mark Springett, Ben Morrison. PDF
• Usenix Security Symposium 2023: “Un-Equal Online Safety?” A Gender Analysis of Security and Privacy Protection Advice and Behaviour Patterns. By Kovila P.L Coopamootoo & Magdalene Ng. PDF
• IEEE Euro S&PW 2023: What we do in the shadows: How does experiencing cybercrime affect response actions and protective practices. By Magdalene Ng, Maria Bada, Kovila P.L Coopamootoo. PDF
• Response to UK Government 2023: Re-imagining AI Governance: a Response by AGENCY to the UK Government’s White Paper AI Regulation. By Owens, Copilah-Ali, Kolomeets, Malviya, Markeviciute, Olabode, Spiliotopoulos, Wu, Nijia, Coopamootoo, Durrant, Elliott, Katsigiannis, Neesham, Lei, Farrand. PDF
• REPHRAIN Whitepaper 2023: Towards tackling violence against women and girls online - REPHRAIN Whitepaper. By Ola Michalec, Kim Barker, Kovila Coopamootoo, Lynne Coventry, Francois Duppresoir, Matthew Edwards, Shane Johnson, Emily Johnstone, Olga Jurasz, Maryam Mehrnezhad, Wendy Moncur, Frances Ridout, Francesca Stevens, Angelika Strothmayer, Leonie Tanczer. PDF
• Usenix Security Symposium 2022: “I feel invaded, annoyed, anxious and I may protect myself”: Individuals’ Feelings about Online Tracking and their Protective Behaviour across Gender and Country. By Kovila P.L Coopamootoo, Maryam Merhnezhad, Ehsan Toreini. PDF
• Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS) 2022: How can and would people protect from online tracking? By Maryam Merhnezhad, Kovila Coopamootoo, Ehsan Toreini. PDF
• Society Journal 2021: Towards an Equitable Digital Society: Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Corporate Digital Responsibility (CDR). By Karen Elliott, Rob Price, Patricia Shaw, Tasos Spiliotopoulos, Magdalene Ng, Kovila Coopamootoo & Aad van Moorsel. PDF
• IEEE Euro S&PW, EuroUSEC 2020: Simulating the Effects of Social Presence on Trust, Privacy Concerns & Usage Intentions in Automated Bots for Finance. By Magdalene Ng, Kovila P.L Coopamootoo, Ehsan Toreini, Mhairi Aitken, Karen Elliot, Aad van Moorsel. PDF
• ACM CCS (Computer & Communications Security) 2020: Usage Patterns of Privacy-Enhancing Technologies. By Kovila P.L Coopamootoo. PDF
• ACM FAT (Fairness Accountability and Transparency) 2020: The relationship between trust in AI and trustworthy machine learning technologies. By Ehsan Toreini, Mhairi Aitken, Kovila P.L Coopamootoo, Karen Elliott, Carlos Gonzalez Zelaya, Aad Van Moorsel. PDF
• Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS) 2017: Why privacy is all but forgotten - an empirical study of privacy & sharing attitude. By Kovila P.L Coopamootoo & Thomas Gross. PDF