In this episode, we're in conversation with feminist scholar and activist, Radhika Radhakrishnan. Radhika is a PhD student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the HASTS (History, Anthropology, Science, Technology & Society) programme. This programme uses methods from history and anthropology to study how science and technology shape – and are shaped by – the world we live in. Trained in Gender Studies and Computer Science engineering in India, Radhika has worked for ov...

Our guest today is Susie Alegre. Susie is an international human rights lawyer and author. We're in conversation about her book, Freedom To Think: The Long Struggle to Liberate Our Minds (Atlantic Books, 2022). Susie talks about freedom of thought in the context of our digital age, human rights, surveillance capitalism, emotional AI, and AI ethics. Susie explains why she wrote the book and why she thinks our freedom of thought is important in terms of our human rights in the digital age. We ...

Our guest today is Professor Veronica Barassi. Veronica is an anthropologist and author of Data Child Citizen (MIT Press, 2020). Veronica campaigns and writes about the impact of data technologies and artificial intelligence on human rights and democracy. As a mother, Veronica was becoming increasingly concerned about the data being collected on her two children by digital platforms. Her research resulted in the book as well as a TED talk, What tech companies know about your kids, that’s ha...

Our guest today is Laura Musgrave. Laura was named one of 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics™ for 2022. Laura is a digital anthropology and user experience (UX) researcher. Her research specialism is artificial intelligence, particularly data and privacy. Laura gave a short talk at the inaugural conference in 2019 on privacy and convenience in the use of AI smart speakers. And at the 2021 event Laura chaired the panel, Data: Privacy and Responsibility. We start our conversation by explo...

Our guest today is Dr Rosie Webster. Rosie has a PhD and an MSc in health psychology. She’s currently Science Lead for Zinc’s venture builder programme. Prior to Zinc, Rosie worked as a UX researcher at digital health company, Zava, and was Lead User Researcher at Babylon Health. While at Babylon, Rosie established the foundations of an effective Behavioural Science practice, which is partly what we’re here to talk about today. Rosie explains that if businesses are interested in deliv...

My guest today is Dr Corinne Cath-Speth. Corinne is a cultural anthropologist whose research focuses on Internet infrastructure politics, engineering cultures, and technology policy and governance. Corinne has recently completed their PhD at the Oxford Internet Institute (OII), which was titled, Changing Minds & Machines. It was an ethnographic study of internet governance, the culture(s) and politics of internet infrastructure, standardization and civil society. Drawing on their re...

Our guest today is Matt Artz. Matt is a business and design anthropologist, consultant, author, speaker, and creator. As a creator he creates podcasts, music, and visual art. Many people will know Matt through his Anthropology in Business and Anthro to UX podcasts. We talk about his interdisciplinary educational background — he has degrees in Computer Information Systems, Biotechnology, Finance and Management Information Systems, and Applied Anthropology — and Matt explains what...

Our guest today is Dr Nat Kendall-Taylor. Nat received his PhD in Anthropology at UCLA and in 2008 he joined the FrameWorks Institute, a non-profit research organisation in Washington, D.C., where he is now the CEO. FrameWorks uses rigorous social science methods to study how people understand complex social issues such as climate change, justice reform, and the impact of poverty on early childhood development. It develops evidence-based techniques that help researchers, advocates, and prac...

Our guest today is Dr Johannes Lenhard. Johannes received his PhD in Anthropology at Cambridge University and in 2017 started a post-doctoral research project, at the Max Planck Centre Cambridge for the Study of Ethics, the Economy and Social Change, on the ethics of venture capital investors. Johannes spoke at the 2021 Response-ability Summit. He shares what drew him to studying venture capitalists and how he does ethnography in this very closed, elite world across various field sites inc...

Our guest today is Lianne Potter. Lianne is an anthropologist, self-taught software developer, cyber security evangelist, and entrepreneur. Lianne works at Covea Insurance as their Information Security Transformation Manager where she advocates for innovation in the cyber security field. Lianne's talk at the 2021 Response-ability Summit was titled, "Reciprocity: Why The Cyber Security Industry Needs to Hire More Anthropologists". In this episode Lianne is in conversation with Isabelle Cott...

My guest today is Gitika Saksena. Gitika is a Director at LagomWorks, a research and innovation consulting firm she founded in 2018. Before that she was a Vice President at Accenture Technology in India, where she led the strategy and design for various talent initiatives. Gitika gave a talk at the 2021 Response-ability Summit in May. Gitika has degrees in Economics and Business Management, as well as a second Master's degree in Social Anthropology from SOAS University of London. During our...

My guests today are Lorenn Ruster and Thea Snow. Lorenn has recently completed her Masters at the School of Cybernetics at the Australian National University and Thea is the Director at the Centre for Public Impact for Australia and New Zealand. Lorenn and Thea are speaking at the 2021 Response-ability Summit on May 20-21. Their talk is titled, "Dignity-centred technology — moving beyond protecting harms to enabling human flourishing". Thea and Lorenn explain how they came to work together, ...

My guest today is Professor Susan Halford, who is the co-Director of the Bristol Digital Futures Institute at the University of Bristol. Susan is our academic keynote at the 2021 Summit. The Bristol Digital Futures Institute (BDFI) is a University Research Institute that pioneers transformative approaches to digital innovation. It brings together researchers from across the disciplines and works with partners in industry, government and civil society. The BDFI is developing in-depth systema...

My guest today is Tom Hoy. Tom is one of the founding Partners at Stripe Partners, the London-based innovation consultancy. Alongside co-founders Tom Rowley and Simon Roberts, Tom has built Stripe Partners from a kitchen table to a thriving business, advising clients including Spotify, Facebook, Google, and Intel. Tom’s particular interests lie in designing new ways to work collaboratively with clients to maximise the impact of Stripe Partners’s work, and helping them to see the value of so...

Our guest today is Dr Gemma Galdon-Clavell. Gemma is the Founder and CEO of Eticas Consulting. Her multidisciplinary background in the social, ethical and legal impact of data-intensive technology has enabled her and her team to design and implement practical solutions to data protection, ethics, explainability, and bias challenges in AI. Gemma, together with her colleague Emma Lopez, is talking at the 2021 Response-ability Summit where they will be sharing their bottom-up approach to algor...

In this episode we're in conversation with Gilbert Hill. Gilbert is a privacy technologist and he's talking at the 2021 Summit in May. Most recently Gilbert was CEO and Advisor to Tapmydata, a start-up building consumer-grade tools for people to exercise data rights, with blockchain keeping score. Before becoming CEO of TapMyData, Gilbert founded Optanon and, as the MD, grew it to become the market leader in the provision of website auditing and cookie compliance solutions in the UK an...

In this episode we talk with Taina Bucher who is an associate professor in screen cultures at the Department of Media and Communication, University of Oslo. Taina is the author of IF...THEN: Algorithmic Power and Politics, published by Oxford University Press in 2018. Taina explains why, as a media scholar, she became interested in algorithms and software, and we discuss her book and her proposal that we must approach algorithms not by asking what is an algorithm but instead when and how are...

My guest today is Astrid Countee. Astrid is an anthropologist and technologist based in Houston, Texas. She is co-founder of Missing Link Studios. In 2016, Astrid wrote an article for Ethnography Matters on why tech companies need to hire software developers with ethnographic skills, and it's this article I explore with her during our conversation. Astrid shares her journey from dreaming of being a surgeon to studying forensic science and then medical anthropology before becoming a softwar...

In this episode we talk to Reema Patel, Head of Public Engagement at the Ada Lovelace Institute. The Ada Lovelace Institute is an independent research institute that was established in 2018. Its mission is to ensure data and AI work for people and society. Reema leads the organisation’s public attitudes and public deliberation research. During our conversation, Reema shares her journey from Cambridge University where she studied philosophy to becoming one of the founding team members of the ...

In this episode we talk to Dr Simon Roberts, business anthropologist and Partner at Stripe Partners, a strategy and innovation consultancy based in London. He's also the author of The Power of Not Thinking. Simon was a keynote at our inaugural summit. And Stripe Partners sponsored both the 2019 and 2020 events. During our conversation, Simon shares how he started out as a business anthropologist. We talk about his 2018 article, The UX-ification of Research in which he decried the fact that re...