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Petra Molnar: AI Ethnography Masterclass

  • Edinburgh Futures Institute - Online Event (map)

This online-only event is a collaboration between the BRAID (Bridging Responsible AI Divides) Programme, the Edinburgh Futures Institute's Centre for Technomoral Futures, and the Law School at the University of Edinburgh.

Join a BRAID masterclass at the Edinburgh Futures Institute and the Centre for Technomoral Futures, on how to do ethnographies of high risk AI.

Led by Petra Molnar and chaired by Morgan Currie, this Masterclass will set out Petra's approach to doing ethnography in this important domain of AI studies, and invite questions and discussion from attendees.

Attendance for this event is online only. It is open to researchers at any stage of their career, but especially PhD students and postdoctoral fellows from any institution.

The event will take place online from 3.30 pm to 5.00 pm BST on Tuesday 24 September.

Tickets are limited, so please book tickets in advance. Joining instructions will be sent to registered attendees.

Speaker Biographies:

Headshot photo of Petra Molnar. She is wearing a bright blue top, with a dark blue jacket. She has long, curly, brown hair and is subtly smiling and looking into the distance.

Petra Molnar is a lawyer and researcher specializing in migration, technology, and human rights. She has worked on forced migration and refugee issues since 2008 as a settlement worker, researcher, and lawyer and holds a Juris Doctorate from the University of Toronto and an LL.M. specializing in International Law from the University of Cambridge. She co-runs the Refugee Law Lab at York University and is a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. Petra’s first book, The Walls Have Eyes: Surviving Migration in The Age of Artificial Intelligence, is based on years of field work from borderlands, detention camps, and high-tech industry conferences. The book weaves together anthropological, legal and political scholarship to understand how technology is being deployed by governments on the world’s most vulnerable with little regulation.

Morgan Currie (chair) is Senior Lecturer in Data and Society in Science, Technology and Innovation Studies at the University of Edinburgh. Her research focuses on the datafication and automation of government services and civil society oversight of these systems, and she co-leads the Critical Data Studies Cluster at the Edinburgh Futures Institute.