Honolulu, Hawai‘i • October 9-12
Associate Professor of Political Science, University at Albany, SUNY
Vice President of Workspace Futures & Market Insights, Steelcase
Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Chicago
Thursday, 11 October, 4:00–4:45
Virginia Eubanks is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University at Albany, SUNY. Her most recent book is Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor, which dana boyd calls “the first [book] that I’ve read that really pulls you into the world of algorithmic decision-making and inequality, like a good ethnography should,” and Ethan Zuckerman calls “one of the most important recent books for understanding the social implications of information technology for marginalized populations in the US.” Eubanks is also the author of Digital Dead End: Fighting for Social Justice in the Information Age; and co-editor, with Alethia Jones, of Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around: Forty Years of Movement Building with Barbara Smith. Her writing about technology and social justice has appeared in The American Prospect, The Nation, Harper’s and Wired. For two decades, Eubanks has worked in community technology and economic justice movements. Today, she is a founding member of the Our Data Bodies Project and a Fellow at New America. virginia-eubanks.com
Friday, 12 October, 11:15–12:00
Donna Flynn is Vice President of WorkSpace Futures and Market Insights at Steelcase. She leads a global team of researchers that delve into wicked problems around the future of work and translate those insights to inform the design of strategies, products, and services. Flynn joined Steelcase in 2011 from Microsoft, where she held a number of user experience leadership roles in product groups focused on mobility, healthcare, and consumer strategy. Prior to Microsoft, she led client projects for Sapient in San Francisco, working with technology and telecommunications clients such as Cisco Systems, Sun Microsystems, and Sprint. Earlier in her career she worked on international development and microfinance with the International Center for Research on Women, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the World Bank. Flynn received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from Northwestern University in 1997. She has been a leader in the EPIC community for years and contributed foundational papers, including Tracing the Arc of Ethnographic Impact (with Tracey Lovejoy) and “Name That Segment!”: Questioning the Unquestioned Authority of Numbers (with Tracey Lovejoy, David Siegel, and Susan Dray).
Wednesday, 10 October, 9:00–9:45
Justin B. Richland is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Chicago and Research Professor at the American Bar Foundation. His research explores the language, culture and politics of contemporary Native American jurisprudence. He authored two books, Arguing with Tradition, The Language of Law in Hopi Tribal Court and Introduction to Tribal Legal Studies, 3d ed (with Sarah Deer), and is working on a third book, Cooperation without Submission: The Language of Law in Native-US Relations. He has also has published articles in leading scholarly journals. Since 2009, Richland has served as Associate Justice of the Hopi Appellate Court, the highest court of the Hopi Nation. In 2016, he was named a J.S. Guggenheim Fellow. To learn more about Richland’s work, read the American Bar Foundation’s profile “Illuminating the Invisible American Sovereignty“.