The Price of Progress: Power and Inequality in the Digital Age

Join us for an evening of lively debate and thought-provoking insights as we explore the hidden power structures behind our increasingly digital world. 

Are new technologies helping to close global and regional inequalities, or reinforcing old divisions between the Global North and Global South? Does the promise of greater connectivity come at the expense of local knowledge, autonomy and control? Are technologies designed to support humanitarian causes always as benevolent as they appear? And, in an age of digital empires and the commodification of human experience and behaviour, are exploitative and extractive practices simply the cost of admission?

Bringing together different perspectives, this event will unpack the ideas of digital colonialism and technocolonialism, and ask what they mean for all of us. From questions of consent and sovereignty to the growing commodification of our data, experiences and behaviour, we will examine who holds power in the digital age – and how they should be held accountable.

Expect an engaging evening of debate, challenging questions and fresh perspectives on the technologies shaping our world. The event will be followed by a networking reception.

Stefan Dercon

Stefan Dercon is Professor of Economic Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government and the Economics Department, and a Professorial Fellow at Jesus College. He is also Director of the Centre for the Study of African Economies, and founder of the Economic Policy Network at the Blavatnik School of Government, offering pro-bono economic advice to senior policy makers in Africa and South Asia. Previously, he was the Chief Economist of the UK's Department of International Development and policy advisor to the FCDO's Foreign Secretary.

Masoumeh Iran Mansouri

Dr Iran Mansouri is an Associate Professor in the School of Computer Science at the University of Birmingham. Her research interests are complementary and wide-ranging, from developing Al-driven algorithms for robots operating in unstructured environments to critical approaches to understanding the societal impact of Al, how it is contested, and the alternative forms of Al that might be possible. She is the co-founder of the Critical Cultural Robotics Network and the Contentious Politics of Al, both based at the University of Birmingham.

Hannah Morgan

Dr Hannah Morgan is a Career Development Fellow at Jesus College and an Honorary Research Associate at the School of Geography and the Environment. Her research interests sit at the intersection between the everyday geopolitics of state power, affectual (non)relations, and digital mediation. She has explored how smartphones have become key technological mediators of affective state power: specifically, how the UK government's Hostile Environment is felt and encountered in everyday digital life.

Temilorun Olanipekun 

Temilorun Olanipekun is a Chancellor's International Scholar and PhD researcher at the University of Warwick. His research examines Al data work and the global inequalities shaping the development of artificial intelligence systems, building on earlier work at the Centre for Global Development and the Nigerian Institute of Social and Economic Research. He holds an MSc in Social Science of the Internet and an MSc in African Studies as from the University of Oxford. Alongside his research, he manages Oxford Said Business School's largest online executive education partnership and serves on the Advisory Board of Reformers of Africa.