I am an Assisstant Professor specializing in the fields of Critical AI Studies and Empirical Ethics. Originally trained in Anthropology and Peace and Conflict Research, my work today is situated at the intersection of STS, Media Studies and Empirical Technology Ethics.
I am the co-leader of the Empirical Ethics Research Group at the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Studies and I coordinate a new Media Studies MA-track on Cultural Data & AI: the first MA program ever to combine Cultural Studies, AI Ethics, and STS with the teaching of programming skills. I am also a Co-PI of the mid-size grant Lost without Translation. Estimations and Implications of Invisible Languages on the Internet and I run an explorative research project on Digital Transformation in the Amazon Assemblage. As part of this project, we have published a magazine merging indigenous knowledges on technology and water preservation with Western scientific approaches. This magazine was translated in Sateré (a traditional indigenous language), English and Portuguese. The research project was also covered in De Groene Amsterdammer and The Guardian.
I am a co-PI of the HAVA Lab, an interdisciplinary hub for the sociotechnical development and ethicopolitical reflection on next generation video AI as well as a member of the Certain-AI Network, a center for explainable, responsible and theory-driven AI. I am further an accelerate fellow at the UvA Data Science Center. In the context of these networks and projects, I am supervising PhD-students who do research at the intersection of technology ethics and STS, including, among others, on the "Ethics of Red Teaming" and the "Ethics of Video AI".
The larger goal and mission of my work is to move AI-Ethics from the PR- to the Engineering-, Infrastructural- and Development-Level. To reach this goal, I am collaborating with a variety of stakeholders raging from NGOs, Tech Start-Ups, Municipalities and Cultural Associations to colleagues from other departments, including Computer Science, Law, and Economics. While doing so, I combine critical co-creation approaches with empirical ethics, always maintaining a reflective STS-lens. I hold a doctorate of philosophy/cultural studies (summa cum laude).
Apart from teaching and research, I am serving as a member of the UvA Ethics Committee.
Before coming to Amsterdam, I was a research associate at the MCTS at Technical University Munich and the International Center for Ethics in the Sciences at Tübingen University, where I was co-leading several national and EU-projects concerned with the creation and ethical advancement of AI-Systems in various domains. I completed my PhD while I was working as a research associate at the University of Frankfurt in an interdisciplinary research project dealing with the “Structural Transformations of Privacy”. I was also a visiting fellow at the Institute for Information Systems Design in Kassel/TU Darmstadt, the Center for Surveillance Studies at Queen’s University (invited by David Lyon) and at New York University, where I was a member of the Privacy Research Group (invited by Helen Nissenbaum).
In 2022 I was honored to be awarded the recognition of being on the list of 100 Most Brilliant Women in AI-Ethics.
I am also a mother of two children.