Subject

AI Ethics

Degrees

PhD in feminist, anti-racist philosophy and science fiction written by women, history of women’s utopian fiction (University of Bologna and University of Granada)

French and English Literature (University of Edinburgh)

Research interests

I run AI ethics and regulation projects with tech companies across Europe, helping companies respond to new legislation like the EU AI act. I also use feminist and anti-racist ideas to help create better and safer AI, for example by looking into whether AI-powered hiring tools can actually de-bias hiring, and how law enforcement’s use of AI tools impacts our right to protest. I’m the co-host of The Good Robot Podcast, where I interview scholars and technologists about AI ethics, and a TikToker for Carole Cadwalladr's All The Citizens' data rights channel. I’m the author of An Experience of the Impossible: The Planetary Humanism of European Women’s SF, and co-editor of The Good Robot: Feminist Voices on the Future of Technology, and Feminist AI: Critical Perspectives on Algorithms, Data and Intelligent Machines.

Teaching Interests

Academic teaching

•           Responsible for co-creating and teaching the Gender and AI module for the MPhil in Ethics of AI, Data and Algorithms at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, 2023 – present.

•           Advisor and guest lecturer for the MSt AI Ethics and Society at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, 2021 – present.

•           Guest lecturer, supervisor and assessor (papers and dissertations) for MPhil Gender Studies, University of Cambridge, 2020 – present.

•           Supervisor for Undergraduate Politics, University of Cambridge 2020-2022.

•           Postgraduate Teaching at the University of Bologna (2016 – 2018): English Literature (Guest Lecturer); British Cultural History (Guest Lecturer). Assisted with pastoral support and the marking and assessment of oral examinations.

Awards and prizes

Grants

1.         Marie Curie research grant (€116,439 plus conference travel costs and any additional external training)

2.         Christina Gaw Postdoctoral Research Grant (£65,000)  

3.         Stiftung Mercator Desirable Digitalisation Grant (€1.9m) 

4.         Grant from Italian AI company, Ammagamma (€60,000)

Publications  

Released and accepted publications

•  Drage, Eleanor and Federica Frabetti (2023) “The Performativity of AI-powered Event Detection: How AI Creates a Racialized Protest and Why Looking for Bias Is Not a Solution”, Science, Technology, & Human Values 0(0), March 2023.

•  Colbert, Max, Eleanor Drage and Federica Frabetti (2023) “Lack of Transparency Over Police Forces’ Covert Use of Predictive Policing Software Raises Concerns About Human Rights Abuses”, Byline Times, 28 March 2023.

•  Drage, Eleanor and Federica Frabetti (2023) “AI that Matters: A Feminist Approach to the Study of Intelligent Machines”, Feminist AI: Critical Perspectives on Algorithms, Data and Intelligent Machines, edited by Jude Browne, Stephen Cave, Eleanor Drage and Kerry McInerney. Oxford University Press.  

•  Drage, Eleanor and Federica Frabetti (2023) “Copies Without an Original: the Performativity of Biometric Bordering Technologies”, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies (4).

•  Cave, Stephen, Kanta Dihal, Eleanor Drage and Kerry McInerney (2022) “Who Makes AI? Gender and Portrayals of AI Scientists in Popular Film 1920-2020”, Public Understanding of Science 0(0).

•  Cave, Stephen, Kanta Dihal, Eleanor Drage and Kerry McInerney (2022) “Who Makes AI? Gender and Portrayals of AI Scientists in Popular Film 1920-2020”, Public Understanding of Science Blog, https://sagepus.blogspot.com/

•  Drage, Eleanor & Mackereth, Kerry (2022) ‘“Does AI Debias Recruitment? Race, Gender, and AI’s “Eradication of Difference”’, Philosophy and Technology 35 (4):1-25.

•  (2022) “‘Bugs’, ‘Broken Binaries’, and Malware: Investigating Gender and the Human in Science Fiction’s Depictions of Technological Malfunction”, Investigating Cultures of Gender Equality, Routledge GRACE Series Volume 3, edited by Suzanne Clisby, Mark Johnson and Jimmy Turner.    

•  (2020) “Decoding Digital Prejudice”, Institute for Arts and Ideas TV, 3 September 2021,

•  (2022) “Performative Assemblages: Race, Gender, and Technology in Science Fiction”, Performing Cultures of Equality, Routledge GRACE Series Volume 2, edited by Emilia M. Durán-Almarza and Isabel Carrera- Suárez. 

•  (2020) “Making Ends Meet in a Superintelligent Slum: Artificial Intelligence and Economic Precarity in Nicoletta Vallorani’s Il Cuore Finto di DR”, Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research (FAFNIR).

•  (2019) “A Geocritical Exploration of ‘Racial’ and Gendered Spaces in Contemporary Science Fiction”. Women’s Voices and Genealogies in Literary Studies in English. Cambridge Scholars, pp. 180-192.

•  (2018) “Science, Myth, and Spirits: Re-inventions of Science Fiction by Women of Colour Writers, Between Africa, Europe and the Caribbean”, Studies on Home and Community Science, 11(2), pp. 77-85.

•  (2018) “A Virtual Ever-After: Utopia, Race, and Gender in Black Mirror's ‘San Junipero’”. Black Mirror and Critical Media Theory, edited by Angela M. Cirucci and Barry Vacker, Lexington Books, pp. 27-39.

•  Westphal, Bertrand (2018) “The Challenge of Invisible Cities: a Calvinian Adventure through Literature and Contemporary Art”. Translated by Eleanor Drage. (Post)Colonial Passages: Incursions and Excursions across the Literatures and Cultures in English, edited by Silvia Albertazzi et al. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp. 6-21.

•  (2017) “In the Hard Times, (and the Good): Solidarities Beyond Race and Gender in Critical Utopian and Dystopian Women’s Science Fiction”, deGenere: Small Islands? Transnational Solidarity in Contemporary Literature and Arts (3), pp. 34-47. 

Books  

•  (2023) Monograph: The Planetary Humanism of Women’s Science Fiction: An Experience of the Impossible, Routledge.

•  (Late 2023) The Good Robot: Feminist Voices on the Future of Technology. Edited by Eleanor Drage and Kerry McInerney. Theory in the New Humanities series, ed. Rosi Braidotti. Bloomsbury Academic. 

•  (2023) Feminist AI: Critical Perspectives on Algorithms, Data and Intelligent Machines. Edited by Eleanor Drage and Kerry McInerney. Oxford University Press. 

•  Drage, Eleanor and Kerry McInerney (2024) Reprogram: Why the Tech Industry is Broken and How Feminism Can Transform It. Princeton UP [in progress]

In peer review                                      

•  “AI Engineers and The Cult of Curiosity: Key Attributes of AI Engineers and Barriers to Diversity”, Big Data & Society.

•  Browne, Jude, Eleanor Drage and Kerry McInerney, “The Politics of Ethical AI and AI-Generated Harm: A Feminist Empirical Study”, British Journal of Political Science.

•  Browne, Jude, Eleanor Drage and Kerry McInerney, “Engineers on Responsibility: Feminist Approaches to Who’s Responsible for Ethical AI”, Ethics and Information Technology (ETIN).

Policy reports  

•  Cave, Stephen, Eleanor Drage and Kerry McInerney, “The Missing AI Principle: Making      AI Capabilities Explicit”, January 2023.

•  Cave, Stephen, Eleanor Drage and Kerry McInerney, “From Guidelines to Practice: How Industry Narratives Shape Ethical AI” [in progress].

•   Drage, Eleanor and Kerry McInerney, “Recruitment AI: Procurement Guide” [in progress]. 

•   Drage, Eleanor and Tomasz Hollanek, “Giving Journalists the Tools to Report Well on AI” [in progress].

Other interests

Dancing, music (from choral to techno!), (watching) sport, fashion, French