CUSAS: “Ethnographies of Technology” Discussion

“Ethnographies of Technology” with Alexandrine Royer, Debra Phelps, Sakari Mesimäki, and Dr Xin Zhan

This two-hour roundtable discussion invites early-career researchers specializing in different ethnographic locales to explore the intersection of technology, work and power. Panellists will take turns answering prompts related to tech subjectivities and labour, notions of social, economic and environmental progress, and emergent political debates and/or mobilizations within their respective field sites. The discussion format intends to draw out the parallels, and frictions, in how techno-capitalism principles and practices appear in contexts such as London, Helsinki, Nairobi and Kigali. The session will also include a thirty-minute question-and-answer period for audience members.

Debra Phelps is a doctoral candidate in Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge. Her research -  informed by many years working in the technology industry in San Francisco and NYC – analyzes the charismatic, affective, and mimetic resonances mobilizing technology in Nairobi’s Silicon Savannah, culminating in the ‘Performance of Innovation.’

Dr Xin Zhan is a Postdoctoral Research and Teaching Associate in Social Anthropology. Her doctoral research examined coding as a socio-economic and ethical practice through which marginalised coders seek value, recognition, and futurity within the broader aspirations of late capitalism. Her current work explores human–AI entanglements, focusing on emerging forms of digital intimacy, care, and kinship.

Sakari Mesimäki is an anthropologist whose research explores how Finnish startup professionals have turned to entrepreneurship as a form of worldmaking agency to ‘make the world a better place’. He is interested in how such professionals find empowerment and a sense of possibility within capitalism, even as accumulation is further entrenched as a condition of doing and creating.

Alexandrine Royer is a doctoral candidate in Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge. Her research explores how tech entrepreneurship has emerged as a national, political, and multilateral developmental strategy to rebuild post-1994 Rwanda while engaging with anthropological debates on the financialization of aid, business ethics, and the creation of tech frontiers.

Prof Sian Lazar is Professor of Social Anthropology and Head of Department at the University of Cambridge. She is a political anthropologist who studies labour politics and social movements. She has authored and edited multiple publications, including her latest book How we Struggle: A Political Anthropology of Labour (2023). 

Dr Gillian Tett is Provost of King's College at the University of Cambridge as well as member of the editorial board and columnist for The Financial Times. She has received many awards, including Columnist of the Year (2014), Journalist of the Year (2009) and Financial Journalist of the Year (2008) at the British Press Awards; the British Academy President’s Medal (2011); and the American Anthropological Association President’s Medal (2022).  Author of multiple books, her most recent publication is Anthro-Vision: How Anthropology Can Explain Business and Life (2021). She received her PhD Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge.

Chaired by Professor Sian Lazar

Discussant Dr Gillian Tett

In collaboration with student members of the Department of Social Anthropology