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 and EU. Gilbert is a Fellow and Senior Tutor on Privacy and Ethics at the Institute of Data and Marketing ..read more

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 explore what freedom of thought is ("some people talk about it as mental privacy") and the difference b ..read more

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 had over 2 million views.  Since the publication of her book, she says there's been a huge accelerat ..read more

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 exploring Laura’s interest in data and privacy, and smart assistants in particular. During her research on sm ..read more

Professor Eerke Boiten is our guest in this week’s episode. Eerke is Professor of Cyber Security and Director of the Cyber Technology Institute at De Montfort University. He’s talking in the Health Tech stream at the conference on 9 October. During our conversation, Eerke shares what prompted his move from computer science into cybersecurity and explains his interest in health data. He talks about data sharing in health, why anonymisation isn’t really safe, and suggests that we need to think about health data in a new way, which might offer a way forward. We move on to talk about ethics in A ..read more

In this episode we talk to Dr Rachel Carey who is Chief Scientist at Zinc. Backed by the London School of Economics, Zinc was created in 2017 to test different ways of tackling important societal issues. Rachel is a behavioural scientist with a PhD in Psychology, and a passion for research translation and innovation. During our conversation, Rachel explains what her role involves and we talk about Zinc's mission and purpose, their Venture Builder Programme, and what it really looks like when you ground new commercial ventures in evidence-based research and with a problem-led approach from the ..read more

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 delivering impact and making a difference, then social science can be really key.  She says that resear ..read more

In this episode we are in conversation with Dr Erin B. Taylor, who is talking in the FinTech stream at the conference in October. Erin is an economic anthropologist who specialises in research into financial behaviour, and is the co-founder and research lead at Canela Consulting.  Erin explains what an economic anthropologist does, what got her hooked on exploring how finances affect people’s lives, and why we don’t understand our own financial behaviours despite money affecting so much of what we do. Erin shares some stories from her consulting life, including anecdotes that showcase why ..read more

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 research, Corinne gave a talk as part of an event series hosted by the Oxford Internet Institute which ex ..read more

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 drew him along this path. He shares his recent realisation that he identifies primarily as a technolog ..read more