Research
Five questions I keep returning to.
Browse by theme
5 of 5 themes
Theme 01
Human Behaviour & Decision-Making
How ordinary decisions are made under uncertainty, obligation and time pressure — and what changes when a recommendation arrives from a system rather than a person.
Current questions
- What do people treat as evidence when a machine and a person disagree?
- How is a decision distributed across family, colleagues and institutions before it is 'made'?
- When does automation reduce deliberation rather than support it?
Future directions
Comparative work on decision environments across clinical, university and public-service settings.
Reading
- Mary Douglas — Risk and BlameRoutledge, 1992
- Lucy Suchman — Human–Machine ReconfigurationsCambridge University Press, 2006
- Annemarie Mol — The Logic of CareRoutledge, 2008
Theme 02
Digital Trust
Trust is treated here as a practice, not a score: something negotiated, withdrawn and repaired in relation to institutions long before any individual system is evaluated.
Current questions
- What is being trusted — the model, the institution deploying it, or the person presenting it?
- How is trust repaired after a system fails someone?
- Why does accuracy so often fail to produce confidence?
Future directions
A grounded framework for trust that institutions can use without reducing it to a survey item.
Reading
- Niklas Luhmann — Trust and PowerPolity, 2017 edition
- Onora O'Neill — A Question of TrustBBC Reith Lectures, 2002
- Shoshana Zuboff — The Age of Surveillance CapitalismPublicAffairs, 2019
Policy documents & grey literature
- Framework Convention on Artificial Intelligence, Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of LawCouncil of Europe, 2024 — treaty text and explanatory report
- AI Risk Management Framework (AI RMF 1.0)US National Institute of Standards and Technology, 2023 — governance and accountability guidance
- Public attitudes to AIAda Lovelace Institute, survey report
- Research ICT Africa — digital policy and data governance researchIndependent African policy research institute
Theme 03
Medical Anthropology & AI in Healthcare
Clinical work is moral work. Introducing predictive systems into it redistributes authority, responsibility and blame in ways that rarely appear in evaluation studies.
Current questions
- Whose knowledge counts when clinical judgement is machine-mediated?
- How do patients experience being assessed by a system they cannot question?
- What happens to accountability when a recommendation has no author?
Future directions
Ethnographic work with frontline health workers adopting decision-support tools.
Reading
- Arthur Kleinman — The Illness NarrativesBasic Books, 1988
- Paul Farmer — Pathologies of PowerUniversity of California Press, 2003
- Deborah Lupton — Digital HealthRoutledge, 2017
Theme 04
Digital Anthropology & Human-Centred AI
Everyday digital life is where AI is actually encountered: in feeds, forms, chat interfaces and the small negotiations people make to get through a system.
Current questions
- How do people domesticate AI tools into existing routines?
- What workarounds reveal about the gap between designed and lived use?
- What would it mean for a system to adapt to people rather than the reverse?
Projects
Future directions
Design-facing translations of ethnographic findings for product and service teams.
Reading
- Daniel Miller — The Comfort of ThingsPolity, 2008
- Genevieve Bell & Paul Dourish — Divining a Digital FutureMIT Press, 2011
- Ruha Benjamin — Race After TechnologyPolity, 2019
Theme 05
Policy, Ethics & the Imagined User
Policy documents contain a person: informed, connected, literate, unhurried. Much of the harm in AI governance comes from the distance between that person and the real one.
Current questions
- Which human does AI policy imagine, and who falls outside it?
- How do ethical principles survive translation into procurement and practice?
- What would participatory AI governance look like in an African context?
Projects
Future directions
Contributions to national and institutional AI governance debates grounded in empirical behaviour.
Reading
- Sheila Jasanoff — The Ethics of InventionW. W. Norton, 2016
- Virginia Eubanks — Automating InequalitySt. Martin's Press, 2018
- Langdon Winner — Do Artifacts Have Politics?Daedalus 109(1), 1980
Policy documents & grey literature
- National Artificial Intelligence Policy Framework (South Africa)Department of Communications and Digital Technologies, 2024 — primary document for Algorithms of Trust
- Minister announces withdrawal of the draft AI policySAnews, 2026 — withdrawal of the 2026 Draft National AI Policy
- Continental Artificial Intelligence StrategyAfrican Union, 2024
- Recommendation on the Ethics of Artificial IntelligenceUNESCO, 2021
- OECD AI PrinciplesOECD, adopted 2019, updated 2024
- Regulation (EU) 2024/1689 — the AI ActOfficial Journal of the European Union, 2024