A Manifesto for Inclusive Digital Futures: Global Conversations and Action on the Fourth Industrial Revolution 

Prof Payal Arora (Erasmus University Rotterdam)

Payal Arora is a digital anthropologist and author of several books including the award-winning “The Next Billion Users” with Harvard Press. She is the co-founder of FemLab.Co, a feminist future of work initiative and section editor for the University of California Press Journal Global Perspectives. She is a Professor and Chair in Technology, Values and Global Media Cultures at Erasmus University Rotterdam. Her expertise lies in user experiences among low-income communities worldwide and inclusive design and comes with two decades of fieldwork in such contexts. Forbes named her the “next billion champion” and the right kind of person to reform tech. Several international media outlets have covered her work including the BBC, The Economist, Quartz, Tech Crunch, The Boston Globe, F.A.Z, The Nation and CBC. She has consulted on tech innovation for diverse organizations such as UNESCO, KPMG, GE, and HP and has given more than 200 presentations in 57 countries. She is Indian, American, and Irish and currently lives in Amsterdam.  

Renata Avila ( Alliance)

Renata Avila, (Guatemalan, 1981), International Human Rights Lawyer and author. She is currently a HAI Race & Tech Fellow at Stanford University. With more than fifteen years of experience working in cutting edge issues related to technology and society.  She co-founded the <A+> Alliance for Inclusive Algorithms. Expert in digital rights, she studies the politics of data, the evolution of transparency, and their implications on trade, democracy and society, alerting about a phenomenon she describes as digital colonialism. She is an Advisory Board member for Creative Commons, Open Future and Cities for Digital Right. She also serves as a Global Trustee of the Think Tank Digital Future Society. She is a co-founder and Council Member of the Progressive International, among other roles.

Professor Caroline Bassett (University of Cambridge)

My research explores digital technologies in relation to questions of knowledge production and epistemology (how does 'the digital' change scholarship, transform understanding, produce new scales or perspectives?) and in relation to cultural forms, practices, and ways of being (how can we understand the stakes of informational capitalism, what are its symptoms, how can we understand its temporalities, the forms of life it enables, and those it forecloses?). I began with an English degree, and then became a technology journalist for some years, before returning to explore media theory at doctoral level. More recently I co-founded the Sussex Humanities Lab at Sussex University. Visiting fellowships include at McGill (IGSF), and as the Helsingin Sanomat Fellow at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies. I arrived at Cambridge in Autumn 2019 as Professor of Digital Humanities and Director of Cambridge Digital Humanities (CDH).

Dr Nick Bradshaw (AI Media Group)

Dr Nick Bradshaw has 25 years experience in the tech sector taking complex technology propositions to market and helping customers deploy and mature Enterprise collaboration software & cloud platforms. Nick has worked in Europe, North America & Africa with a diverse set of Multi $bn global clients.  He has built and exited a successful digital practice & Microsoft Gold software start-up (Complexus) and consulted with multiple tech start-ups building Sales & Marketing Ops in the UK, Europe and Africa.  Post exit of Complexus Nick launched the AI Media Group in 2017, a new hybrid media, consulting & events company offering clients insights into the growing 4IR opportunity in Africa.  AI Media are creators of Africa's largest B2B AI innovation & trade focused community (AI Expo Africa), Africa's first AI & Data Science Magazine (Synapse) and Africa’s first dedicated AI focused streaming channel (AI TV).  

Professor Jane Duncan (University of Johannesburg)

Jane Duncan is a professor in the Department of Journalism, Film and Television at the University of Johannesburg. She was previously Executive Director of the Freedom of Expression Institute (FXI), and has held various other posts, including the Chair in Media and Information Society in the School of Journalism and Media Studies at Rhodes and co-Director of the Highway Africa Centre. She is the author of ‘The Rise of the Securocrats: the Case of South Africa’, ‘Protest Nation: the Right to Protest in South Africa’ and ‘Stopping the Spies: Constructing and Resisting the Surveillance State in South Africa’. She completed a PhD at the Wits School of the Arts in 2007.

Professor Hopeton Dunn (University of Botswana)

Hopeton Dunn is an internationally established research scholar, lecturer and policy analyst in new media, digital inclusion and communication technologies. He is Professor of Communications Policy and Digital Media, University of Botswana, and non-resident Senior Research Associate, University of Johannesburg. Professor Dunn is the former Director of the Caribbean School of Media and Communication (CARIMAC), University of the West Indies, Jamaica. He served for 10 years as Chairman of the Broadcasting Commission of Jamaica and for 4 years as Secretary General of the International Association for Media and Communications Research (IAMCR). He remains Chairman of IAMCR’s international panel for the biennial award of the Stuart Hall Prize. His most recent co-edited book - Re-imagining Communication in Africa and the Caribbean: Global South Issues in Media, Culture and Technology, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in January 2021.

Professor Gerard Goggin (University of Singapore)

Gerard Goggin is Wee Kim Wee Professor of Communication Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He is also Professor of Media and Communications, University of Sydney. Gerard has had a longstanding interest in social justice, media, and technology – especially via collaborations on disability and digital inclusion. Key books include Digital Disability (2003; with Christopher Newell), Cell Phone Culture (2006), Disability and the Media (2015; with Katie Ellis), the Routledge Companion to Global Internet Histories (2017), the Routledge Companion to Disability and Media (2020), and, most recently, Apps: From Mobile Phones to Digital Lives (2021).

Professor Richard Harper (Lancaster University)

Richard Harper has written 14 books and collections, including The Myth of the Paperless Office (2003), Texture: human expression in the age of communications overload (2010) and most recently, Skyping the Family (2019). He has 28 patents on diverse aspects of interactive systems. He is concerned with all aspects of Human Computer Interaction – from GUI design to systems architecture. He is Co-Director for the Institute of Social Futures (ISF) at the University of Lancaster.

Professor Robin Mansell (London School of Economics)

Robin Mansell is Professor of New Media and the Internet in the Department of Media and Communications, London School of Economics and Political Science. She received her PhD 1984 from Simon Fraser University Canada and was Professor of Information and Communication Technology Policy at SPRU (Science Policy Research Unit) University of Sussex 1988-2000. Her research focuses on technology innovation, digital platform regulation and governance and its socio-political and economic consequences. She is author of Imagining the Internet: Communication, Innovation and Governance, Oxford University Press, 2012 and co-author of Advanced Introduction to Platform Economics, Edward Elgar Publishing, 2020.

Professor Madeleine Murtagh (University of Glasgow)

Professor Madeleine Murtagh Chair of Social Data Science in the School of Social and Political Sciences at University of Glasgow. Her work includes social studies of sociotechnical and normative practices in health research data sharing and governance, particularly interventionist, collaborative ethnographic studies with and of the progress, emergent values, outcomes and social effects of health and genomic data science. Alongside this work, she develops new forms of governance for responsible and responsive data sharing in health services, biobanks and cohort studies which centrally involve citizens and research participants in ethical and governance decision-making.

Professor Simeon Yates (University of Liverpool)

Professor Simeon Yates is Associate Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research Environment and Postgraduate Research. His research on the social, political and cultural impacts of digital media includes a long-standing focus on digital media and interpersonal interaction. More recently, he has worked on projects that address issues of digital inclusion and exclusion. He was recently seconded to the UK Government's Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to act as research lead for the Digital Culture team. He remains the joint-chair of the DCMS Research Working Group on Digital Inclusion and Skills. His prior work covered topics such as the use of digital technologies in the workplace, digital media use during crises and ICT use by the security services. The majority of his research has been funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), EU and industry. Simeon’s work has often been interdisciplinary and has predominantly involved creative and digital industry partners. He led on a major Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) funded interdisciplinary programme (Engineering for Life) while at Sheffield Hallam.