Dr Tanya Filer leads the Digital State project at the Bennett Institute for Public Policy, Cambridge. Her focus is public sector innovation and digitalisation, on which she has published widely. Tanya teaches on the MPhil in Public Policy and other postgraduate programmes. She sits on the Steering Committee of Cambridge’s Trust and Technology Initiative and Advisory Board, Information Law and Policy Centre, University of London. Tanya is Founder and Director of StateUp, an advisory firm focused on digital innovation with public purpose, and has worked with governments, international organisations, and start-ups in Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East. A British Council fellow in Cyber (2018), Tanya has also held fellowships at Harvard and Yale. 

Dr Beth Singler is the Junior Research Fellow in Artificial Intelligence at Homerton College, University of Cambridge. Beth’s research explores the social, ethical, philosophical, and religious implications of advances in AI and robotics. She has produced documentaries on AI, and the first, ‘Pain in the Machine’, won the 2017 AHRC Best Research Film of the Year award. She was one of the Evening Standard’s Progress 1000 in both 2017 and 2018, and in 2020 she was one of the 21 to Watch. She has spoken at the Hay Festival, the Edinburgh Science Festival, Ars Electronica, and New Scientist Live. 

Dr Ella McPherson is Senior Lecturer in the Sociology of New Media and Digital Technology as well as the Anthony L. Lyster Fellow in Sociology at Queens’ College. She is also Co-Director of the Centre of Governance and Human Rights, where she leads the research theme on human rights in the digital age. At the Department of Sociology, Ella is Director of Undergraduate Education and Coordinator of the MPhil Pathway in Media and Culture. Ella is on the Executive Committee of Cambridge’s Trust and Technology Initiative and leads The Whistle, an academic startup, funded by the ESRC and an EU Research and Innovation Horizon 2020 grant, that aims to support the collection and verification of digital human rights evidence. 

Dr Sharath Srinivasan is Co-Director of the University of Cambridge’s Centre of Governance and Human Rights, the David and Elaine Potter Lecturer in the Department of Politics and International Studies, and a Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge. From research at Cambridge on technology, media and politics in Africa, he co-founded Africa’s Voices Foundation, a Kenya-based non-profit that advances governance and social change with new methods for amplifying citizen voice in decision-making. He recently co-founded Katikati with Luke Church (Computer Laboratory), a new initiative for enabling transformative 1-to-1 text conversations in local languages at scale. 

Luke Church is an affiliated lecturer at the Cambridge Computer Laboratory. His research focuses on the design and use of socio-technical systems, which he has applied in a number of contexts from architecture to privacy. Most recently he has supported Africa's Voices Foundation in developing a technical infrastructure for amplifying citizen voice in decision making. In 2020 he co-founded Katikati with Sharath Srinivasan (Politics and International Studies), a new initiative for enabling transformative 1-to-1 text conversations in local languages at scale.