We are delighted to announce that Gina Neff from the University of Cambridge and Sharon Strover from the University of Texas at Austin are the TAS ‘23 symposium plenary speakers.
Gina Neff – University of Cambridge
Gina Neff is the Executive Director of the Minderoo Centre for Technology & Democracy at the University of Cambridge. Her books include Venture Labor (MIT Press 2012), Self-Tracking (MIT Press 2016) and Human-Centered Data Science (MIT Press 2022).
Her research focuses on the effects of the rapid expansion of our digital information environment on workers and workplaces and in our everyday lives. Professor Neff holds a Ph.D. in sociology from Columbia University and advises international organisations including UNESCO, the OECD and the Women’s Forum for the Economy and Society. She chairs the International Scientific Committee of the UK’s Trusted Autonomous Systems programme, is associate director of the ESRC Digital Good Network and is a member of the Strategic Advisory Network for the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council. Professor Neff serves on the board of directors for the Social Science Research Council.
Her academic research has won both engineering and social sciences awards. Professor Neff led the team that won the 2021 Webby for the best educational website on the Internet, for the A to Z of AI, which has reached over 1 million people in 17 different languages.
Sharon Strover – University of Texas at Austin
Dr. Strover is the Philip G. Warner Regents Professor in Communication, former Chair of the Radio-TV-Film Department at the University of Texas, and now Professor in the School of Journalism and Media where she teaches communication technology and policy courses and directs the Technology and Information Policy Institute. She is a founding member and current Chair of the UT-Austin Grand Challenge examining Ethics in AI in a program called Good Systems. Her current research projects examine AI, surveillance technologies and public policy; the economics and policies around broadband networks; libraries and digital literacy; and the digital divide. Sharon has worked with several international, national and regional government agencies, foundations, and advisory groups on communications policy matters, including Facebook, the EU, The Institute for Library and Museum Services, The US Department of Agriculture, the FCC, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, Micron, and Texas state agencies such as the Department of Information Resources, Health and Human Services, the Public Utility Commission and the Texas State Library. She is on the Editorial Boards of major communication journals and has chaired two divisions in the International Communication Association. Her work can be found in several major professional journals and books in the field. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her graduate degrees from Stanford University.
