Thanks to the YERUN Research Mobility Award I have done a research stay from the 11th to the 18th of May 2019 with Prof. Dr. Tsjalling E. Swierstra at the Department of Philosophy of the Maastricht University Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, within the framework of the excellence Science, Technology and Society Studies (MUSTS) research programme. The stay has also allowed me to exchange views with other researchers of the group, among whom Darian Meacham, Ties van de Werff and Katleen Gabriels.
On the 15th of May, I presented the talk “Privacy, freedom and the socio-political implications of big data technologies” at the Ethics and Politics of Emerging Technologies Meeting (MEPET). The MEPET is a seminar held by the Maastricht branch of a national group of scholars from different Dutch universities, studying ethics and politics of new and/or emerging technologies. In Maastricht, the group consists mainly of people from MUSTS and the Health, Ethics & Society (MU – HES) research group, whose research deals with ethics, morality or politics of technology.
The experience has been extremely fruitful to know the perspective of Techno-Moral Change and the Responsible Research and Innovation studies, in which Professor Swierstra and the rest of the EPET members are specialized. Besides, given the interdisciplinary nature of my research line, it has been a great opportunity to explain and bring up for discussion the core findings of my predoctoral research to an external audience specialised in Philosophy of Technology, before depositing and defending my thesis. Finally, I had the opportunity to learn more about the new Maastricht University Bachelor’s degree in Digital Society, which will start on September 1st 2019.
Sara Suárez Gonzalo is a predoctoral researcher at the Department of Communication of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra of Barcelona (Spain). Her thesis focuses on the social and political implications of big data technologies from the lens of freedom, privacy and personal data protection. In this final stretch of her thesis, Sara has concentrated on studying this question in light of the neo-republican theory of freedom as non-domination and the second-wave feminist critique to privacy’s traditional conception. Sara has recently submitted her thesis and will defend it soon. Sara has published various articles in academic journals and presented her research at international conferences in both fields of Communication and Political Philosophy. More about Sara:
ORCID ID: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6883-1984
Academia.edu: https://upf.academia.edu/SaraSuarezGonzalo
