In this episode we talk tech, power, and the endless hell of phone storage with sociologist Professor Gina Neff.

As the Executive Director of the Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy at Cambridge, and the Professor of Technology and Society at Oxford, she briskly rejects the mythology of a ‘lone genius’ in Silicon Valley coding every aspect of our daily lives.  Instead, she champions those she calls the ‘unsung heroes’ of innovation – essentially everyone struggling to make a “better, faster, new way of working” actually … work.

Her academic research spans industries as diverse as fashion, construction, and healthcare, and she’s equally at home online, winning a coveted Webby award for her beginner’s guide ‘The A to Z of AI’.

Her love of a good data story well told is anything but dry, and her pandemic project is still flourishing.  But her main goal is to empower us all to answer two key questions: what kind of future do we want? And what choices must we make today to make that happen?

Learn More:

Follow Gina Neff on Twitter (for those daily flower photos and more!) 
https://twitter.com/ginasue

Gina Neff is the Executive Director of The Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy at CRASSH - all projects discussed in this episode can be found here:
The Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy
https://www.mctd.ac.uk/

Watch Gina Neff give the CRASSH annual lecture, on 'The Cost of Data - making sense in digital society'  
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P94q42MzKvI

Her recently published book, Human-Centered Data Science, discussed in this episode can be found here:
Human-Centered Data Science
https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262543217/human-centered-data-science/

Gina Neff's 'A to Z of AI' project, discussed in this episode, and which won a Webby Award for Best Educational Website in 2021, can be found here:
https://winners.webbyawards.com/2021/websites-and-mobile-sites/general-websites-and-mobile-sites/education/174204/the-az-of-ai


Other examples of Gina Neff's work can be found here:

On why AI must not make working women's lives worse
AI must not make women’s working lives worse - OECD.AI
https://oecd.ai/en/wonk/ai-womens-working-lives

A paper relating to her ongoing work on technology in commercial construction, 'Innovation through practice: the messy work of making technology useful for architecture, engineering and construction teams'
https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:8354369c-816b-4bc9-a74d-4f276fe4cc41

Her work on data, and on work: Who does the work of data? 
http://interactions.acm.org/archive/view/may-june-2020/who-does-the-work-of-data
and Venture Labor
https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262527422/venture-labor/

Episode 14: We are innovation and communication

Thoughtlines brings you the best academic thinking outside the box from CRASSH at the University of Cambridge. The podcast is presented by Catherine Galloway and produced by Carl Homer at Cambridge TV.

A well as Thoughtlines episodes you can enjoy podcast episodes produced by some or our Research Networks and Research Labs.

The Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) is an interdisciplinary research centre at the University of Cambridge.
Founded in 2001, CRASSH came into being as a way to create interdisciplinary dialogue across the University’s many faculties and departments in the arts, social sciences and humanities, as well as to build bridges with scientific subjects. It has now grown into one of the largest humanities institutes in the world and is a major presence in academic life in the UK. It serves at once to draw together disciplinary perspectives in Cambridge and to disseminate new ideas to audiences across Europe and beyond.