Session Chairs

Our main programme on Thursday and Friday comprises nine 60-minute sessions, each of which feature three talks from members of our community who are sharing their work and research. These sessions are chaired by the following people who will facilitate an interesting discussion between the presenters and the audience.

Dr. David Barnard-Wills is a Senior Research Manager in the Policy, Ethics and Emerging Technologies at Trilateral Research, a UK- and IE-based SME at the cutting edge of understanding and developing social responsible technology and innovation. David manages the ethical, legal, data protection and societal impact work on several projects looking into the application of AI technologies. David has a PhD in the politics of surveillance and identity technologies from the University of Nottingham, and has previously been a Research fellow in politics at the university of Birmingham, in information systems at Cranfield University, and at the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology. He’s just co-authored an open access book, “The GDPR made simple(r) for SMEs”. He’s on Twitter at @dbarnardwills.

Dr. Ralph Borland is an artist, curator and interdisciplinary knowledge worker based in Cape Town, South Africa. He was born in South Africa, and grew up in Cape Town and Harare, Zimbabwe, and has lived and studied abroad, in New York and Dublin. He has a degree in Fine Art from the University of Cape Town, and a Masters in Interactive Telecommunications from New York University. His PhD, in the School of Engineering at Trinity College Dublin, is a critique of first world design interventions in the developing world. His post-doctoral work has focused on Southern agency in the face of North-South knowledge inequalities. He’s on Twitter at @ralphborland.

Corina Enache blends multidisciplinary education with practice. She has two bachelors in political science and marketing, an MSc in cultural anthropology, and has worked for various companies across the world. For the last five years she has run her own applied anthropology company, The Sweet Spot. Corina works alongside designers and other anthropologists for start-ups and companies from various sectors and universities in Europe and New Zealand. She is currently Lead Organisational Development at Transavia, Netherlands. Besides co-founding Interbuilding Applied Anthropology Meetup and Namla, Corina founded and hosts a social science podcast called The Human Show.

Laura Musgrave is a senior researcher, specialising in socially-responsible AI, particularly data and privacy. She works in the UK and conducts international research for a FTSE 100 brand. Laura is also a research scholar in digital anthropology and user experience. Most recently, she has been studying the exchange of privacy and convenience in the use of AI smart speakers in the UK. You can find Laura at www.lauramusgrave.co.uk and on Twitter as @lmusgrave.

Lisa Talia Moretti is a Digital Sociologist and Tech Ethics Activist. For more than a decade, Lisa has researched and written about the relationship between technology, information and society. Lisa was named one of Britain’s 100 people who are shaping the digital industry. She sits on the AI Council for BIMA, is on the All-Party Parliamentary Group taskforce for Blockchain Cities. Her TEDx talk on ‘Technology is not a product, it’s a system’ is available for viewing on TED.com. You can find Lisa on Twitter at lisatalia.

Dr. Erin B. Taylor is an economic anthropologist who specialises in research into financial behaviour. She is Principal Consultant at Finthropology. Erin is the author of the book, Materializing Poverty: How the Poor Transform their Lives (2013, AltaMira), which deals with socioeconomic transformation in the Dominican Republic. She has published chapters (with Professor Heather Horst) on financial inclusion and financial literacy in Haiti and the Dominican Republic in Money at the Margins (2018, Berghan), Design Anthropology (2017, Springer) and Linguistic and Material Intimacies of Cell Phones (2018, Routledge). You can find Erin on Twitter at erinbtaylor_.

Dr. Gigi Taylor is a design anthropologist at Indeed where she conducts cultural analyses on the hiring practices of organizations. Gigi started her career at Publics & Hal Riney Advertising in San Francisco where she was first introduced to the application of anthropology to advertising. She later became a partner with Practica, a consumer anthropology research consultancy. Gigi was also an assistant professor of Advertising at Texas State University where she introduced elements of cultural anthropology into her courses. She embraces the idea that consumer and user experience insights informed by anthropology can serve as the muse and inspiration for all aspects of product and brand strategy. Gigi holds a PhD and MA in Advertising from the University of Texas and an MA in Applied Anthropology from University of North Texas. You can find Gigi at gigitaylor.com and on LinkedIn, and she’s on Twitter as @GigiTaylor.

Damini Satija is a public policy professional working on data and AI ethics with a particular interest in privacy, digital rights and tech equity. Currently she is a Senior Policy Advisor at the Centre for Data Ethics & Innovation, an independent expert committee in the UK government working on data ethics and responsible innovation. She has a Masters in Public Administration from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. In 2018, she was a Google Public Policy Fellow at Engine Advocacy in Washington D.C. She also a Global Policy Fellow at the Institute for Technology & Society in Rio de Janeiro.

Dr. Melanie T. Uy is a lifelong learner and known for unexpected questions. She obtained her Ph.D. in Social Anthropology at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam investigating the phenomenon of social detachment in transient employment workplaces of migration brokers in China. She is fascinated with how detachment is the currency of rapid mobility, though efficient, reproduces predatory, and unaccountability in the flexible capitalist practices of migration. She continues to pursue network thinking and the ecosystem approaches in her practice as a user experience researcher and service designer in the Netherlands. She is currently writing on the politics of speed in broker work and epistemic (in)justice in research cultures. You can follow her on Medium @anthrobuzz and join her reading journey on Goodreads.