Dr. Deena Abul-Fottouh
Assistant Prof. Dalhousie University, Sociology and Social Anthropology
Dr. Deena Abul-Fottouh is a computational social scientist specializing in the exploration of social media data to enhance our understanding of various societal issues. Her primary research focus is on examining online misinformation, racism and hate speech, and online extremism. Deena completed her doctoral degree in sociology at McMaster University studying online networks of the Arab Spring, where she was a recipient of the esteemed Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship. Deena’s research encompasses a broad range of interests, including big data and social media analytics, social movements and digital activism, political sociology, and social inequality. Methodologically, her expertise lies in social network analysis, quantitative methods, and data science. Deena has previously taught Human Centered Data Science at the University of Toronto and has worked as a Research Specialist with the United Nations Development Programme. Her research on misinformation and online extremism is currently funded by SSHRC.
Dr. Ellie O’Keeffe
National Centre for Social Research (UK), Centre for Deliberation
Dr. Eleanor O’Keeffe is Senior Researcher at the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen). As part of NatCen’s Centre for Deliberation, she delivers deliberative research on contentious issues ranging from attitudes towards climate change technologies to the impact of the pandemic on social health inequalities. She leads ‘Pilgrimage Futures’ which is funded by the British Academy and Leverhulme small grants scheme. Eleanor is interested in the ethical and social questions raised by social and cultural technologies and has published on a wide range of topics, including digitally enabled commemorative “mega events”, digital memorialisation, and the pandemic’s impact on pilgrimage practices in the UK.
Dr. Jake Metcalf
Data & Society Research Institute, New York
Dr. Jacob (Jake) Metcalf, PhD, is a researcher at Data & Society, where he leads the AI on the Ground Initiative, and works on an NSF-funded multisite project, Pervasive Data Ethics for Computational Research (PERVADE). For this project, he studies how data ethics practices are emerging in environments that have not previously grappled with research ethics, such as industry, IRBs, and civil society organizations. His recent work has focused on the new organizational roles that have developed around AI ethics in tech companies. For this Symposium, Dr. Metcalfe will provide his research expertise to the field of pilgrimage, and brings his insights to the conversations stemming from the Symposium.
Dr. Steve Jackson
Professor, Cornell University
Steve Jackson is a professor in the Department of Information Science and Department of Science and Technology Studies, with additional graduate field appointments in Communication and Public Affairs. He teaches and conducts research in the areas of sustainability; scientific collaboration; technology ethics, law and policy; and global change and inequality. More specifically, he studies how people organize, fight, and work together around collective projects of all sorts in which technology plays a central role. He also studies how infrastructure – social and material forms foundational to other kinds of human action – gets built, stabilized, and sometimes undone. This brings him regularly into worlds of policy, organizational or institutional analysis, and occasionally into design. His most recent venture is the Computing On Earth Lab, an experimental collaboration that brings together social scientists, humanists, artists and engineers to rethink the material and planetary foundations of computing.
Sananda Sahoo
PhD Candidate, Faculty of Information and Media Studies, Western University
Sananda Sahoo is a Lecturer/University Fellow in Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina, Asheville. She defended her doctoral dissertation in Media Studies at the Faculty of Information and Media Studies, Western University. Sananda looks at the intersections of public, public space and digital infrastructures. Her research areas include critical data studies, data histories, political posters and platforms, questions of collective responsibility, sites of violence in the digital sphere, and colonial narratives in photographs and memoirs by women.
STS 