School of Social and Political Science

Research interests

Sociology of Science, Scientometrics, Metascience, Science of Science, History and Philosophy of Science, Computational Social Science, Public Policy

Rhodri Leng is Lecturer and Programme Director of the MSc in Science and Technology in Society. His core research programme, as developed in The Matter of Facts (2020, MIT Press), concerns how science develops: how its findings spread and influence opinion, how its ideas come to be accepted or rejected by particular communities, and how those communities grow, fragment, and decline over time. 

As a mixed-methods researcher, Rhodri combines computational and quantitative techniques with qualitative case-study methods. He employs science mapping techniques, particularly citation network analysis, to trace the development of research fields, while case studies and text analyses focus on the development of specific theories and hypotheses. This approach integrates large-scale, data-driven analysis with interpretive understanding of scientific practice.

His current research is focused on three related topics:

• The dynamics of scientific field and topic development — how research fields and their focusses emerge, evolve, reorganise, and decline.
• Dissemination biases and their effects — how citation bias, hype, and other distorting practices shape the circulation, uptake, and interpretation of findings, and affect of these practices on the reliability of the scientific literature.
• The relationship between scientific development, funding, and policy —  how patterns of publication, citation, and researcher careers interact with funding priorities and policy agendas.

His research has contributed to debates on how science might be better managed, particularly in light of concerns about the reliability of published work. His work also contributes to understanding how academic evidence informs policy, industry, and publics, increasingly important at a time of growing concern over misinformation and hype. He brings this expertise to training students in the social and natural sciences, equipping them with the skills to systematically review academic literature and the critical tools to analyse the dynamics of knowledge production and use.

Current Projects

Principal Investigator (2025-2026) on UKRI2102: Shaping Research Ecosystems: UKRI funding and the UK research base in a global context (£177,973)

Completed Projects

ESRC Postdoctoral Fellow (2020-2021). Project title: Selective citation and the shaping of scientific knowledge: Citation network analysis and the diet–heart debate (£100,000)

ESRC Advanced Quantitative Methods PhD Studentship (2016-2019): Project title: Selective citation and the shaping of scientific knowledge: Citation network analysis and the diet–heart debate.

PhD Supervision

Rhodri is happy to supervise undergraduate or postgraduate students interested in the sociology and history of science, the emerging fields of metascience and science of science, or science policy. He is particularly keen to supervise those interested in practices of evidence use in the scientific literature, the use of scientific evidence in policy or industry, or studies of scientific topic and field development.

Find out more about the programmes that I am involved with:

• PhD in Science and Technology Studies
• MSc (R) Science and Technology Studies