Executive director of the Minderoo Centre for Technology & Democracy at the University of Cambridge

Gina Neff

Gina Neff, a Data & Society advisor, is the executive director of the Minderoo Centre for Technology & Democracy at the University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on how the rapid expansion of our digital information environment affects workers and workplaces, and our everyday lives. She is the author of books including Venture Labor (MIT Press 2012), Self-Tracking (MIT Press 2016), and Human-Centered Data Science (MIT Press 2022). Neff led the team that won the 2021 Webby for the best educational website on the internet, for “The A to Z of AI,” which has reached over one million people in 17 different languages. 

Neff advises international organizations including UNESCO and the OECD. She is on the executive leadership team and chair of the strategy group for UKRI Responsible AI UK (RAI), and is associate director of the ESRC Digital Good Network. She leads the Humanitarian Action Programme at the University of Cambridge, and is a member of the Horizon Europe international AI4Trust team to tackle online misinformation. A member of the Strategic Advisory Network for the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council, she serves on the board of directors for the Social Science Research Council in the USA. Neff holds a PhD in sociology from Columbia University.

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