JFLS: Beyond the Human
What lies beyond the human? From AI, to animal studies, to questions about technology and ethics, this lecture asks what we can learn from interrogating the nonhuman subjects and objects that surround us and form much of our lives.
This event will be moderated by Professor Matt Ratto. Professor Ratto is a Professor in the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto, where his research examines the social production of knowledge and the design of sociotechnical systems. His current work focuses on artificial intelligence – exploring how AI systems can be designed to recognize, engage with, and remain accountable to social, cultural, and organizational contexts rather than abstract notions of general intelligence. His scholarship draws on STS, HCI, and design research to foreground issues of context, equity, and situated knowledge in AI development.
With presentations from:
Marjan Naghshbandi is a second year MASc candidate whose work situates itself at the intersection of Human-Computer Interaction and Management Science. Her NSERC-funded research explores how collaborative conversational interfaces (e.g., Slack) interplay with the social well-being of engineering design teams. Marjan’s insights are derived from (1) interviews with team leaders and (2) trends in teams’ conversational data, as revealed by natural language processing methods. She strives to design collaborative tools that nurture socially meaningful collaboration amidst the sociotechnical demands of modern innovation.
Marjan will discuss how teams perceive Psychological Safety (i.e., comfort with interpersonal risk-taking) to differ on Slack compared to in-person collaboration. The insights lead to implications for leadership, conversational interface design, and algorithmic monitoring of social well-being in teams.
Rowan O.A. Munson is a PhD student in the Faculty of Information and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. His interdisciplinary research is developing a method that helps technology designers to think about their ways of being in the world, how it’s expressed in their technology, and to think about the effects their technologies on people, place, and planet. Professionally, Rowan has managed social research projects for UK Government agencies and charities, co-authored the Universal Healthcare National Inquiry Report in England, and taught Health and Social Care as a Visiting Lecturer at London South Bank University. He has a rich background in public policy and advocacy, having served voluntary roles as an Expert Witness to UK House of Commons Health and Education Select Committees, and on the Executive Committee of the Young Greens of England and Wales (youth wing of the Green Party). When not immersed in research and teaching, Rowan enjoys exploring art galleries, admiring modernist architecture, and savouring a good novel with a cup of herbal tea. Technology designers’ understandings of ‘being’ shape not only the tools they create but also the worlds these technologies help to build.
Rowan’s presentation will examine how engaging these designers in ontological inquiry can foster a deeper connection with non-human worlds, promoting the development of socially just and sustainable technologies.
Renée Sirbu is a Ph.D. student at the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology. Renée received her B.Sc. in Human Biology, Bioethics, and Philosophy at UofT and her M.P.H. in Health Policy and Public Health Modeling at Yale, before spending two years as a predoctoral researcher at Yale’s Digital Ethics Center. At Yale, her research surrounded the integration of digital technology into the biological lifespan, including human-machine coupling, neurotechnologies like brain-computer interfaces, and AI use in clinical and insurance settings.
Renée’s work is focused on technology at end-of-life—in the mediation of grief and the creation of a new, digital “immortality.” Her dissertation defines the birth of digital immortality as a new Cartesian problem, as she works to reject the notion of a body-independent self in the modern digital world.
Tselot Tessema is a PhD Candidate in Industrial Engineering at the University of Toronto, where she is developing digital health solutions for chronic disease management in the Wellness and Health Enhancement Engineering Lab led by Dr. Montague. As a trainee at the Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research, she focuses on designing human-centred technologies to improve the accessibility of cardiovascular care in low-resource settings. Her work has been recognized with the 6T6 50th Anniversary Award in Healthcare Engineering. Tselot is passionate about translating engineering principles into practical tools that enhance patient outcomes and solve critical gaps in care integration and continuity.
Tselot’s talk explores the opportunities and risks of human-AI teams in participatory design research. As artificial intelligence increasingly participates in design processes, what happens when we invite a nonhuman ‘collaborator’ to co-design solutions with communities?
Ferdinand Reke Avikpe is a PhD candidate in Biomedical Engineering, where he develops computational and bioprocess models to improve the large-scale production of human pluripotent stem cell–derived tissues. His work sits at the intersection of stem cell biology, systems engineering, and mathematical modeling, and he is passionate about bridging quantitative methods with regenerative medicine.
Reke’s research uses computational modelling to understand how biochemical and mechanical cues shape stem cell fate decisions in dynamic bioreactor environments. By examining how cells respond to their microenvironment — from nutrient availability to mechanical forces — his work explores where the “human” ends and engineered biological systems begin.
Ben Pulver is a 4th year Doctoral Candidate in the department of Art History. His research is on the history of cybernetics (a cross-disciplinary science of feedback and control in living and machinic systems, often considered a proto-field of AI), and its manifestation in aesthetics and art in post-war France. Attending to the way cybernetics ‘found form’ in the public imagination, through art, theory, and by those who developed oppositional stances such as the Situationists.
Ben’s work locates cybernetics in the extended apparatus of French colonial statecraft—exemplified most evidently, perhaps, by the eventual installation of the Minitel (the French proto-Internet personal computer device) in the Ivory Coast. His project develops an aesthetic theory of dysfunction (an ‘aesthetics of dysfunction’), which finds itself at the centre of the cybernetic art and writing he examines; it is a theory that highlights a fear of disorder or disequilibrium and is reflected at the level of administration and language of France’s colonial enterprise. Beyond this history, he is interested in finding new ways to critique AI and its part in a broader nexus of the ‘informatics of domination’ through its longer imbrications in war, fascism, and statecraft.
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