Event description coming soon.

This event is open to the public, and we encourage all interested faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate students to attend.

Advance registration is recommended. Register to attend on Zoom: https://umich.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_LrO1U6J_SrG1h5lh_l0Nxw

Meet the Panelists:

Jenny L. Davis is the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair and Professor of Sociology at Vanderbilt University with a secondary appointment in Vanderbilt's College of Connected Computing (CCC). She is an Honorary Professor of Sociology at The Australian National University, an alumni affiliate at the Center for Democracy and Technology, and Co-Director of Vanderbilt's Computing + Society program. She works at the intersection of social psychology and technology studies, focusing on the ways social forces embed within and are affected by, technological systems. Her first book, How Artifacts Afford: The Power and Politics of Everyday Things (MIT Press 2020) presents an operational framework for the analysis and design of technologies in society. Her second book, The Injustice of Fairness: Algorithmic Reparation and the Case for Redress shifts the foundation of algorithmic ethics, challenging 'fairness' as the default value-standard (co-authored with Apryl Williams) (UC Press, 2026).

Julián Posada is an Assistant Professor of American Studies and co-director of the certificate in Computing, Culture, and Society at Yale University. His research examines the social and cultural dimensions of information, especially the role of labor and infrastructure in the development of artificial intelligence. He is the author of Platform Extractivism: Data Work and The People Powering Artificial Intelligence (University of California Press, 2026). This book argues that the development of datasets for artificial intelligence depends on labor organized through “platform extractivism,” a system that exploits economic instability to capture value from precaritized workers. By reframing AI data work as a continuation of historical extractive relations, the monograph intervenes in debates on the future of work and the hidden costs of AI and digital platforms. Posada’s interests include platform studies, labor studies, digital ethics and policy, social computing, and science and technology studies.

Apryl Williams is a jointly appointed Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication & Media and the Digital Studies Institute at the University of Michigan. She is also a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, a former Senior Fellow in Trustworthy AI at Mozilla, as well as an affiliated researcher at NYU's Center for Critical Race & Digital Studies. She is the author of Not My Type: Automating Sexual Racism in Online Dating, published with Stanford University Press. As a multidisciplinary scholar, Williams studies experiences of gender and race at the intersection of digital spaces and algorithmic technocultures.

Rua M. Williams is an Assistant Professor in the School of Applied and Creative Computing at Purdue University and a former Just Tech Fellow with the Social Science Research Council. As Principal Investigator of the CoLiberation Lab, Dr. Williams’s work explores how disabled people imagine and build their own sociotechnical worlds. Projects in the CoLiberation Lab investigate how technology policy and research practice interact to disrupt disabled people’s bodily autonomy and access to meaningful public life. Dr. Williams's book, Disabling Intelligences: Legacies of Eugenics and How We Are Wrong about AI is forthcoming from Palgrave MacMillan.

Meet the Moderator:

Catherine Knight Steele is an Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Maryland - College Park where she directs the Black Communication and Technology lab (BCaT) as a part of the Digital Inquiry, Speculation, Collaboration, & Optimism (DISCO) Network funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. She is a 2024-26 Just Tech Fellow. Her research focuses on race, gender, and media, with a specific emphasis on Black culture and discourse and digital communication. She examines representations of marginalized communities in the media and how groups resist oppression and practice joy using online technology to create spaces of community.

We want to make our events accessible to all participants. CART captioning services will be provided. If you anticipate needing additional accommodations to participate, please email Cherice Chan at [email protected].