Global Digital Futures

This week, we welcome Dr. Ronda Zelezny-Green to speak about Mobile Phones & Educating the Girl Child in Kenya. Ronda is a mobile technologist, educator, and researcher, whose professional experience spans the public, private, and civil society sectors. She specialises in educational technology (especially mobile learning), gender, teaching and training, and policy advice. Ronda regularly publishes in academic forums, and is globally recognised as the world’s foremost expert in gender and mobile learning, and she is a sought-after speaker and thought leader in this area.

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This week, we welcome Dr. Dounia Mahlouly to speak about Digital Strategies for Counter Narratives. Dr. Mahlouly is lecturing at SOAS Centre for Global Media and Communications. She conducted her PhD research at the University of Glasgow, in partnership with the American University in Cairo and worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher at King's College London, as part of the European consortium VOX-Pol. Her research interests are in the area of Media Studies and Political Communication. Her work focuses on the interplay between state and non-state actors' communication strategies in post-2011 North Africa. She is about to publish an ethnography of research in 'violent online political extremism', which is designed as a contribution to the current academic debates in critical terrorism studies.  

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This week, we welcome Dr. Yenn Lee, to speak about Molka & Online Violations of Women in South Korea. Yenn is an active researcher in the field of digital culture and politics, with a focus on the Asia-Pacific region. At SOAS she also designs and delivers an institution-wide training programme for doctoral researchers. In addition to providing courses and workshops on research methods and skills, both online and offline, she is responsible for a range of other tasks to enhance postgraduate research experience.

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This week, we welcome Angad Chowdhry and Anurag Banerjee, the co-founders of Quilt.AI, the company using big data to understand people better. We speak to them about AI for Social Good.

Dr Angad Chowdhry completed his PhD from SOAS, the University of London. His  academic specialization is anthropology and media studies. He has conducted big data / big culture research in over 70 countries across clients and industries. At Quilt.AI he is working on integrating the latest advances in cognitive computing with the exponentially increasing human data that is being openly generated to conduct anthropology at scale.

For almost a decade, Anurag Banerjee ran a 800 person team for global business development at American Express. He built a fee based Travel Big Data business to $1BB before starting on his entrepreneurial journey. He was employee number one at Jana Mobile (invested in by Publicis and Verizon ventures with $100MM raised). Post exiting Jana, he raised $150MM across multiple ventures he has backed / advised. SocialCops is his venture prior to Quilt.ai was funded by Ratan Tata & work for India’s Prime Minister Modi.

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Listen to our World Radio Day Special with Max Graef of Radioactive. Max started RadioActive in 2004 to support independent radio. They provide technical assistance and equipment to independent radio stations around the world, and believe in the power of radio as a tool for communication, sharing information and facilitating positive change. Their work includes technical services for radio stations and studios – including technical advice and feasibility studies, studio design and installation, creation of radio imaging (jingles, adverts and trailers), radio production training and ongoing technical support.

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This week we speak about Technologies of Financial Inclusion in Low Income Countries. a key focus for the Centre for Global Finance at SOAS, run by Professor Victor Murinde.

Professor Victor Murinde is a financial economist, with more than 25 years’ expertise, mainly in academia, policy and consultancy roles for governments and leading international organisation. He was the founding Director of African Development Institute at the African Development Bank (2011-2014). Professor Murinde is currently the Principal Investigator (PI) of a large research project on “Delivering Inclusive Financial Development and Growth”, and a Co-Investigator on “Research on China’s Financial System towards Sustainable Growth: The Role of Innovation, Diversity and Financial Regulation” jointly with colleagues at SOAS University of London and Nankai University Tianjen, and Zhejiang University, Hangzou, in China.

In 2017, he was appointed to the AXA Chair in Global Finance in the School of Finance and Management at SOAS University of London, and he is responsible for providing CGF’s vision, strategy, and oversight.

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This week we have 2 guests in the studio to talk about Queering the Internet, LGBTQ Representation Online. Following the repealing of section 377 in India. A law which gives hope for LGBT communities by making homophobia illegal. In this episode we explore the realities and how queer identity can exist online. 

Mayur Suresh is a Lecturer in Law at SOAS. In 2016, he was awarded a PhD from Birkbeck for this thesis titled ‘Terrorist’ lives in Delhi’s courts: An ethnography of the legal worlds of terrorism trials. Before his doctoral studies, Mayur practiced law in Delhi, where he and his colleagues represented a wide variety of clients. Mayur was part of the legal team in the Naz Foundation case – that successfully challenged India’s anti-homosexuality law in the Delhi High Court, and defended the judgment in the Supreme Court. Mayur has co-edited a volume on the politics of the Indian Supreme Court titled The shifting scales of justice: The Supreme Court in Neoliberal India (2014). He is currently completing a book manuscript based on his doctoral research. 

Tabitha Millet researches in the areas of Queer Theory and Art Education at UCL. Tabitha’s PhD research focuses on developing and troubling the curriculum at GCSE by exploring gender and sexuality in the art classroom. Tabitha has taught Art and Design in a number of London schools and continues to develop her own artistic practice working with the themes of gender and sexuality. Tabitha has held exhibitions in London, Oxford and Cambridge. In addition, Tabitha was recently awarded the Spirit of Soho award for her artwork and the Charles Fox prize at Cambridge for her research.

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This week we are speaking with 2 SOAS students from Egypt about Online Spaces & Overcoming Government Censorship. Hossam Fazulla is a researcher and writer from Cairo. He has spent the last 7 years bridging the gap between art and human rights as Director of Freedom of Artistic Creation at the Association for Freedom of Thought and Expression (AFTE) and as a former trainer at Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies. Fazulla’s work focuses on cultural policies and the contemporary Egyptian cultural scene. Fazulla has authored several publications including Why You Can’t be Creative in Egypt (2017), Cultural Policies: Foundation, Evolution and Problems (2015), and co-authored Censor of Creativity (2013).

Salma Khamis is a researcher and writer from Cairo, whose interests lie somewhere in between journalism and academia. She conducted research on Muslim-Christian relations and religious diversity in Egypt and formerly worked at one of the country's leading independent news outlets Mada Masr. These days, Salma’s research interests are more focused on literary studies of contemporary Egyptian cultural products. She examines representations of Egyptian identity constructions across various art forms, with a marked emphasis on revolutionary culture.

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This week we are speaking with Griff Ferris from Big Brother Watch about exactly Who Should Have The Right To Watch Over You? Big Brother Watch aims to expose and challenge threats to our privacy, our freedoms and our civil liberties at a time of enormous technological change in the UK. Their work includes research around facial recognition and biometrics, access to communications data, and digital surveillance. Their most recent campaign #FREESPEECHONLINE focuses on the risks of censorship online.

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We speak with Soum Paul about Cultural Nuances & India’s Digital Economy. Soum is the CoFounder and CEO of Homescreen Network, a television network venture built for the smartphone era. Over the last two decades, he’s played instrumental roles in a series of disruptive startups - Knowlarity, State.com, Mixercast. He’s also a writer, and his books Topper Prepares andFlight of the Unicorns have both been published by Harper Collins India. When in between projects, he spends his time trotting the globe and developing his photography and filmmaking skills.

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