📢 Check out our work on the 'words we use in data' and why it matters - view here
Community
Regularly meet other members of the tech ethics community to share stories, get feedback and advice on your projects, and learn how others have campaigned for funding within their organisation.
Caring about ethics in your organisation can be a lonely task. You're constantly fighting to show that ethics matters, win budget for your work, educate yourself, become a change management professional and an activist and ALL whilst doing other jobs.
You are in great company - although you may feel alone - there are actually quite a few of us worldwide. It's about time we coordinated. Join this meet up to chat to other people who are doing the same job as you, exchange advice on how to manage tricky problems and situations, and have fun.
This meet up is open to everyone - whether you are an aspiring ethicist or an established one, and to those who work in all industries.
Join a meet up...
Our community meets (virtually) on the second Thursday of every month in the evening (European time). These events include a provocation, a Q&A, coordinated discussion topics and serendipitous networking.
Past and upcoming speakers
Each month we invite a speaker to present a provocation at the start of our meet up. Have a look through some of our previous and future guest speakers below:
Jan 2023
Alice Bennett is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at Liverpool Hope University. Her research investigates why contemporary culture is preoccupied by a cluster of states related to attention and alertness, including focus, vigilance and wakefulness. She is the author of Contemporary Fictions of Attention (Bloomsbury, 2018) and Alarm (forthcoming from Bloomsbury, 2023).
Nov 2022
Diana Spehar is a tech innovation enthusiast drawing upon nearly a decade’s worth of professional experience in IT strategy, implementation, and tech policy. Currently serving as the Data Ethics Lead for Sky Group. She focuses on designing and delivering responsible innovation programmes, either within corporate innovation (deep tech accelerators) or tech policy (mobile for development advocacy programmes). In her spare time, Diana also freelances as a tech journalist. Advised FTSE 100 firms on technology and strategy improvements (EY UK&I and Financial Services). Diana was also a previous speaker at the UN panel on the role of socio-cultural factors in addressing the digital gender divide
Oct 2022
Cian is a Senior Research Fellow at UCL’s Department of Science and Technology Studies. In 2014 he co-founded Uplift, Ireland's largest digital advocacy organisation. Right now he is researching the impacts of digital transformation on long term care users and workforces. He uses this work to study who benefits from innovation in digital infrastructures more broadly, who pays for it, and who decides. In 2014 he co-founded Uplift, Ireland's largest digital advocacy organisation.
July 2022
Naomi Mwasambili is the CEO and co-founder of Chanua, an innovation agency which specialises in health and mental health, and the co-founder of Livy Africa, a manufacturing, research and development social business focused on the production and development of ethical products and services.
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March 2022
Lara Groves is a Researcher at the Ada Lovelace Institute, currently researching algorithmic impact assessments and exploring their potential to build algorithmic accountability. She is interested in the intersections between tech, society, and democracy, and prior to joining Ada worked in tech policy & political consultancy.
February 2022
Erika Cheung is the Executive Director of Ethics in Entrepreneurship, a non-profit organization with the mission to embed ethical questioning, culture, and systems in start-up ecosystems worldwide. Erika began her career working as a medical researcher in the biotechnology industry and is most famously known for being a key whistle-blower reporting the medical-diagnostic company Theranos to health regulators. Erika went on to help launch a technology accelerator in Hong Kong supporting early-stage technology investments across the Asia-Pacific (APAC) region. She continues to advise and support the development of biotechnology and healthcare initiatives across the APAC region.
December 2021
Anouk Ruhaak is a Senior Fellow with the Mozilla Foundation. She designs and implements data governance models that help us share the benefits of data more widely, while shifting agency from data collector to those the data is about. Anouk has a background in data journalism, political economics and software development, and founded several communities in the tech space.
November 2021
Dr Charlotte Webb is co-founder of Feminist Internet, a collective of artists, researchers and activists aiming to disrupt inequalities in internet products, services, and systems by bringing together technology development, creative practice and feminism. She is Senior Lecturer at the Creative Computing Institute, London, where she created a Masters Degree in Internet Equalities, which explores how power relations are organized, embedded and perpetuated in internet technologies, and how they can be re-organized or challenged through critical, creative and activist practice. Charlotte was nominated by the Evening Standard as one of the most influential people in Technology and Science in London, 2018.
October 2021
Jason Blackstock is the Founder & CEO of How to Change the World – a social enterprise spin-out from University College London that delivers experiential education programs based on the UN Sustainable Development Goals in partnership with leading universities around the world. From 2013-2018 he was the Founding Head of UCL’s Department of Science, Technology Engineering and Public Policy, and he has previously taught, led research and provided policy advice from universities and think tanks including Harvard, Oxford, the Centre for International Governance Innovation, and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
September 2021
Dama Sathianathan is a partner at Bethnal Green Ventures (BGV), Europe’s leading early-stage tech for good VC, backing ambitious founders using technology to tackle pressing social and environmental challenges at scale. At BGV, she leads on community and networks, driving BGV's efforts to act with integrity on diversity, equity and inclusion in helping founders from underrepresented backgrounds access capital and fuel the wider tech for good movement across the UK. Dama previously worked for international NGOs using digital and data for good and has a background in international relations and global development. She's also a Trustee at Chayn, a non-profit building open-source products and services for survivors of gender-based violence and domestic abuse.
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July 2021
Alex Mecklenburg is the Co-founder of Consequential CIC, a social innovation practice specialising in responsible strategy, cultured change for creative and technology-enabled businesses. She is passionate about messy humans, collective human possibilities and responsible businesses. Alex believes that connections and relationships are the fuel that drives innovation and enables organisations to thrive. Leveraging her 20 years of experience in the creative industry, Alex now works at the intersection of creativity, technology and cultural change, She is a certified leadership coach and team facilitator, a member of the Dotproject.coop and the cofounder of Truth & Spectacle, a creative leadership lab.
April 2021
Susie Alegre is an international human rights lawyer and writer, Associate at Doughty Street Chambers and a Research Fellow at the University of Roehampton working on digital rights, in particular the right to freedom of thought in the digital world. She has published widely in academic journals and international media and her work on freedom of thought was featured in the Radio 4 Documentary “Forum Internum.” She is currently working on a book on the topic for Atlantic Books.
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March 2021
Siddharth Venkataramakrishnan is the acting European tech correspondent at the Financial Times, where he covers policy and politics online - ranging from content moderation and extremism to data transfers and healthtech. Prior to joining the tech team, he was a leader writer at the FT and has also worked in consulting.
February 2021
Dr Kim Foale is a social science researcher and full-stack web developer, specialising in social impact projects and measurable social change. They are the founder of Geeks for Social Change.
January 2021
Yassmin Abdel-Magied is a Sudanese-Australian writer, broadcaster and award-winning social advocate with a background in mechanical engineering. One of the 2020 LinkedIn Changemakers, Yassmin is a globally sought-after advisor on issues of social justice, focused on the intersections of race, gender and faith. She has travelled to over 24 countries across five continents, speaking to governments, civil society and corporates on inclusive leadership, tackling bias and achieving substantive change.
November, 2020
Christine Jakobson is an ethics researcher and consultant. Christine is a doctoral candidate at the University of Cambridge where her research is at the intersection of aesthetics, moral and political philosophy. She is also a senior ethics consultant at Principia Advisory where she advises clients across Silicon Valley, international banking and top-tier global professional services on culture, responsible innovation and ethical use.
September, 2020
Iyas AlQasem has led companies from a 2 man startup to a team of 500; with revenues from £0 to 9 figures; from plateaus to rapid growth; from implosion to turnaround; through acquiring and being acquired; and IPO to a high 8-figure trade-sale. Along the way, he set up a charity that's helped thousands of children in refugee camps, under occupation and in war zones.
August, 2020
Katrin Fritsch is a data and society researcher and writer. She is co-founder of MOTIF Institute for Digital Culture, an independent think tank that operates at the intersection of technology and society. Katrin holds a MSc in Data & Society of the London School of Economics and Political Science and was placed on Forbes magazine’s 30 under 30 list.
July, 2020
Alix Dunn is the founder of Computer Says Maybe, a firm supporting design and deployment of digital tools in complex systems. She founded The Engine Room, a distributed team that supports activists around the world to leverage technology and data in strategic and mission-aligned ways.
Check out our write ups from our community events
