This roundtable brings together experts on digital media, visual cultures and politics, misinformation, political violence, and generative AI. Curated by Adi Kuntsman and Jessica Elias, the panel will explore the role of generative AI in contemporary politics through a range of theoretical and disciplinary lenses. 

Panellists’ info

Prof Miriyam Aouragh, Professor of Digital Anthropology, CAMRI, University of Westminster https://www.westminster.ac.uk/about-us/our-people/directory/aouragh-miriyam

Bio: Miriyam Aouragh studies the political role of new digital tools and spaces and the way colonial and imperial histories shape present computational infrastructures. She writes about these matters (Palestine Online (IB Tauris 2011); (with Hamza Hamouchene) The Arab Spring a decade on (TNI 2022); Mediating the Makhzan (r)evolutionary dynamics in Morocco (CUP) and (with Paula Chakravartty) Infrastructures of Empire (forthcoming) and organises community projects with  The Institute for Technology in the Public Interest.

Prof Roger Canals , Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Barcelona www.rogercanals.net  www.visualtrust.ub.edu

Bio: Roger Canals is a Professor at the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Barcelona (UB). He is currently the PI of the ERC-Consolidator project ‘Visual Trust. Reliability, accountability, and forgery in scientific, religious and social images’ (2021-2026). Specialist in Visual Anthropology, he is the author of many articles as well as of the books including A Goddess in Motion (2017) and The Image that Never Ends. A Journey through Visual Anthropology (forthcoming). As a filmmaker, he has made several internationally awarded films like “A Goddess in Motion” (2016) and “Chasing Shadows” (2019). In 2016, he received the Fejos Fellowship for Ethnographic Film from the Wenner-Gren Foundation of New York. 

Dr Donatella Della Ratta, Associate Professor of Communication and Media Studies John Cabot University, Rome https://www.johncabot.edu/faculty/donatella-della_ratta

Bio: Donatella Della Ratta is Associate Professor of Communication and Media Studies at John Cabot University in Rome. She is a former Affiliate of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. Her research on generative AI earned her the Italian Ministry of Culture ‘Italian Council’ award 2024-25. She is currently developing her concept of ‘speculative violence’ into various formats,  including the lecture performance Ask Me for Those Unborn Promises That May Seem Unlikely to Happen in the Natural

Dr Yoav Galai, Department of Politics International Relations and Philosophy, Royal Holloway, University of London https://pure.royalholloway.ac.uk/en/persons/yoav-galai

Bio: Yoav Galai is a former photographer and current academic working in the field of visual politics. His recent publications explored racialised visualities and their ongoing political effect through technological imaginaries and within social-scientific epistemologies. He also teaches advanced visual methods as part of a course in visual politics at Royal Holloway, University of London and you can this year’s student work here: http://visualwriting.org/exhibition/

Dr Nataliia Laba, Assistant Professor in Digital and Multimodal Communication / Humane AI, Communication and Information Studies, University of Groningen, the Netherlands. https://www.nataliialaba.com/

Bio Nataliia Laba is an Assistant Professor in Digital and Multimodal Communication / Humane AI at University of Groningen. Her research focuses on multimodal generative AI and works at the intersection of critical data studies and discourse studies. Nataliia’s research projects address human-machine agency and a range of representational issues in the context of generative AI adoption and use.