Aphra Kerr
Dr Aphra Kerr is Professor in the Department of Sociology at Maynooth University, Ireland. She is a co-PI and science lead within the Transparent Digital Governance strand at the Science Foundation Ireland funded ADAPT Centre for AI and Digital Content Technology, a multi-institutional and multidisciplinary national research centre (2021-2026). She is also PI on two collaborative projects with Dublin City Council and Smart Dublin (2022-2024) which focus on novel applications of digital technologies, including digital twins, in the public sector and for civic engagement. In addition, she is co-PI on the YouGamSI project (2022-2024) which examines gambling marketing on the island of Ireland funded by the HEA North South research programme. Her current research focuses on the design, governance and social impacts of AI across media, games and everyday smart technologies. Her books include Global Games: Production, Circulation and Policy in the Networked Age, Routledge, 2017, and she was associate editor of The International Encyclopedia of Digital Communication and Society, Wiley-Blackwell, 2015. In 2021 she was invited into the Academy of Europe on the Film, Media and Visual Studies panel. In 2016 she received a Distinguished Scholar award from the international Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA). She was awarded a PhD in Communication Studies (DCU, 2000). For more see Maynooth University work website, LinkedIn or Twitter @aphrak.
Alison Powell
Dr Alison Powell is Associate Professor in Media and Communications at the London School of Economics and the founding program director of the Data and Society Master’s program stream. She directed the JUST AI Network: Joining Up Society and Technology for AI, supported by the AHRC and the Ada Lovelace Institute. JUST AI creates alternative ethical spaces, practices and orientations towards the issue of data and AI ethics within a broad community of practice. Alison is the author of Undoing Optimization: Civic Action and Smart Cities, published by Yale University Press, and has teaching and research interests in both critical data studies and media futures, as well as practice-based research, including her data walking project.
The Synthetic City 