Technology, Culture, and Power Speaker Series: Dr. Seeta Peña Gangadharan

December 5th, 2024 - 4:00 pm to 5:30 pm

Encina Commons 615 Crothers Way Room 119
Stanford, CA 94305

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Join Stanford PACS and the Cyber Policy Center for a monthly gathering that explores critical insights on the intersections and implications of technology and society. The Technology, Culture, and Power Speaker Series is a thought-provoking forum on the Stanford campus featuring leading experts and scholars examining the interactions of digital technologies, culture, and inequality.

Light refreshments will be served. Please arrive 5 minutes early to avoid disrupting the guest speaker.

We are joined by Dr. Seeta Peña Gangadharan, Associate Professor of Media and Communications at LSE, who explores the critical distinction between fair and equal participation in community-oriented technology research. In her talk, Dr. Gangadharan examines how collaborative approaches to studying the impacts of sociotechnical systems on marginalized communities can deepen our understanding of fairness in research participation.

Who benefits from community-oriented tech research or research into lived experience of people with technology? In this talk, Dr. Gangadharan explores fair participation in collaborative approaches to studying the impacts of sociotechnical systems on the lives of members of marginalized communities. Fair participation offers a pragmatic alternative to the often-burdensome demands of participatory action research and co-design frameworks. It brings attention to the importance of division of labor in the generation of new knowledge. It recognizes the broad set of actors that help activate new knowledge, convert knowledge into action, and confront power in and of sociotechnical systems. Using examples of collaborative research on privacy and surveillance, Dr. Gangadharan compares differences between fair participation and equal participation and reflects on the capaciousness of fairness in addressing technology and marginality.

Dr. Seeta Peña Gangadharan is Associate Professor in media and communications at LSE. Her work focuses on inclusion, exclusion, and marginalization, as well as questions of democracy, social justice, and technological governance. She co-leads two projects: Our Data Bodies, which examines the impact of data collection and data-driven technologies on U.S. marginalized communities, and Justice, Equity, and Technology, which studies data-driven technologies and infrastructures in European civil society. She is also an Affiliated Fellow of Yale Law School’s Information Society Project and Affiliate Fellow and Advisory Board Member of Data & Society Research Institute.

Request disability accommodations and access information here.

This event is made possible with support from the Humanities Seed Grant from Stanford Public Humanities.