Announcing our speakers

We are happy to announce our exciting line-up of speakers. Join them on Thursday 16 July, 2 pm at the live Q&A for an online conversation about the opportunities and challenges involved in digital anthropology.

Annie Liu is a UX Researcher and an applied anthropologist from Taiwan. For the past four years, she has been working in tech companies and start-ups in Berlin driving human-centred design. At the moment, she works at Ada Health, translating complex user behaviours into actionable insights to help product teams develop digital health solutions that improve people’s life. Annie holds a MA in Material Cultural and Design Anthropology from UCL, a Research Master in Social Sciences from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and a BA in International Business from National Taiwan University.

Sasha Rubel is Programme Specialist in the Digital Innovation and Transformation Section of the Communication and Information Sector at UNESCO. In this framework, she coordinates the Organization’s work on artificial intelligence, digital transformation, and internet governance.  From 2013-2018, Sasha was liaison officer to the African Union and Economic Commission for Africa and Advisor in the Sahel for issues related to digital transformation and innovation. A former student of the École Normale Supérieure, she holds an MA in anthropology and new media studies, and has undertaken a PhD in the anthropology of new technologies and digital transformation.

Norman Schräpel is Program Director Digital Transformation for GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit) in Tunisia. He is responsible for and coordinates country-specific activities in Tunisia on digital transformation. He started his career as anthropologist at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg where he received his MA (Magister) in Social and Cultural Anthropology with his MA-thesis on “Rendering Technology – Re-Building South Africa’s Health System through Information and Communication Technologies”. Norman has a keen interest in various topics of digital anthropology. Describing himself as “passionately working on digital innovation”, he is an expert on digital transformation, GovTech, data analytics, digital health, internet governance, etc.

Asta Vonderau is Professor of Anthropology at the Institute for Social and Cultural Anthropology of Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg since 2018. One of her research interests is investigation of internets materialisties and social as well as environmental impacts of IT technologies. Her project Farming Data, Forming the Cloud The Environmental Impact and Cultural Production of IT-Technology (2014-2018) engaged with the infrastructural and industrial dimensions of global data flows and was based on the case study of cloud infrastructure implementation in Northern Sweden. Vonderau is also interested in developing a methodology of Anthropology in/of Data Saturated Worlds.