Next in our DM talks series we have Ajit Pillai, a visiting scholar from the University of Sydney working with Prof. Richmond Wong. Join us on Monday the 23 at 11 am in TSRB 118 to hear about his research on the ethical tensions tech workers face

About the talk:

Tech workers are increasingly playing the role of ethicists, where they must make responsible design decisions and envisage the consequences of their design. This requires practitioners to act with intent and align their decision-making with ethical implications while navigating professional, organisational and business objectives.

This talk is based on a study that looks to understand the complex narratives of tech workers while engaging with ethical tensions in the workplace that encompasses many inter-personal, social and temporal dimensions. I will be talking about how ethical tensions are experienced at different levels of micro (self, other design teams), meso (management or organisation as a whole) and macro (society) pertaining to varied practitioners attitudes towards those tensions (investigating, suppressing and mediating). The narratives also involve tech worker's entanglements with communities being vital sites of care and safety that enable members to surface and mediate ethical tensions.

About the speaker:

Ajit G. Pillai is a second year PhD candidate and researcher at Affective Interaction Lab in The University of Sydney, Australia. His PhD focuses on ethical tensions experienced by tech workers within the technology design process. He uses iterative participatory methods as his mode of enquiry and knowledge development. He is also a researcher with the Westmead Healthcare precinct in New South Wales Australia, where he studies the role of immersion, presence and Virtuality for therapeutic and enrichment purposes with children, young adults and older adults.