Alison’s work concerns aspects of epistemic justice, ethics, expertise and knowledge politics in technology design. It can be practical, speculative or interventionist, seeking to explore and generate alternatives within the design, regulation and institutional practices associated with technology. Using social scientific, creative and participatory methods, Alison's work foregrounds creativity and participation as essential components of research that can generate alternatives for digital futures. Research outputs beyond academic articles, books and chapters have included poems, gallery exhibits, speculative fiction and performance, and Alison has appeared on BBC radio, Talk TV and at the Museum of London, among many public engagements.
Current Research
Alison’s current research concerns the relationship between discourse and design of technology, through a project called Deceptive Stories of Technology (and what to do about them). The project asks: What is the significance of stories told about technology? Who tells them, and how do certain interests get designed into things like AI devices, while others aren’t considered? What potential is there for other stories to be told, heard, and acted upon within organizations, especially public sector organizations? Several research strands include:
- Research on the way that data-driven public consultation can alienate public participation and contribute to political polarization addresses these questions using the case of Low-Traffic Neighbourhood planning.
- Research on start-up interventions into the UK National Health Service reveals how challenges to epistemic justice are evident in conflicts over scale, time, and the meaning of evidence.
- The development of sociotechnical principles including reciprocity, temporality and repairability to address epistemic injustices and other inequalities. Opportunities to develop and test these can come from research and practice developed with communities, public sector and public interest organizations.
Other Research
Digital futures
Undoing Optimization: Civic Action and Smart Cities, published by Yale University Press (2021) argues that ‘techno-systemic frames’ shaped by powerful actors shape what kinds of civic actions are possible. The book outlines the history of the ‘smart city’ since 2001, including commercial and radical iterations, and concludes by imagining a transformed vision of ‘smartness’ and citizenship.
‘How Can Anyone Be More than One Thing’ – uses the ‘more-than-human’ to consider rights, justice and equality in urban settings, employing an exchange of letters and two pieces of speculative fiction to explore ideas of ‘otherness’. This writing formed part of the MoTH project: More-than-Human Data Interactions in Smart Cities.
“Rewilding the Night” re-imagines how, where, and why we choose to utilise artificial illumination, using ‘smart’ lighting prototyping as an opportunity to imagine and build more just, sustainable and ethical urban spaces. This project involved collaborating with astronomers, lighting designers, philosophers and architects to re-consider the social construction of darkness in relation to justice and flourishing.
Data and AI Ethics
The JUST AI Network: Joining Up Society and Technology for AI, supported by the AHRC and the Ada Lovelace Institute, transformed data and AI ethics research in the UK. JUST AI created alternative ethical spaces, practices and orientations towards the issue of data and AI ethics within a broad community of practice, introducing questions of sustainability of AI infrastructure and rights, access and refusal.
‘Data walking’ integrates performance, reflection and collaborative knowledge production to investigate data infrastructure and its social consequences. Data walking formed part of the artistic research project Museum of Contemporary Commodities in 2018 and is widely used in teaching, research and public consultation worldwide.
Technology Futures
The Values and Ethics in Innovation for Responsible Technology in Europe (VirtEU), funded by the EU H2020 programme , examined ways to explore ethics in practice among Internet of Things developer communities and responsible innovation, and the Technology for Good movement.
The Understanding Automated Decisions, funded by the Open Society Foundations considered the possibility and consequences of explaining how algorithms work. Understanding Automated Decisions also culminated in an interactive research exhibit in the LSE Gallery exploring public reflections on interface design for explanation.