digital anthropologist
My current research focuses on how people relate to one another through emerging intelligent technologies. I am currently working on a book project – Intelligent Artifice – which explores the worlds of people that maintain romantic relationships with AI avatars, as well as those who use AI to recreate deceased loved ones. I explore the ideological and cultural underpinnings of such worlds, which delineate new formulations of the self, personhood and kinship.
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Prior to this I was the lead ethnographer on a project examining how machine learning systems were being implemented in local government to manage populations in the UK. I looked at how the children's welfare system was beginning to utilise intelligent technologies, and how normative formulations of kinship were inherently encoded into such systems.
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I completed my PhD at University College London in 2020, and have since held postdoctoral and visiting lecturer positions at UCL and KU Leuven. I have also given guest lectures at Boston University, University of South Florida, Florida International University, the University of Washington, University of the Arts London, the University of Manchester and the University of Amsterdam. I have published extensively on digital culture in social, economic and political life. Beyond the digital, I have also conducted extensive fieldwork in Latin America and the US, writing on theories of value, kinship and personhood.