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Stephanie Hankey

Harvard University | Tactical Tech

Biography (as at 2022)

Stephanie Hankey is a designer, technologist and social entrepreneur with 20 years experience exploring the social and political impact of technology on society. Currently she is a Loeb Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. She co-founded Tactical Tech in 2003 which undertook pioneering work on digital security and privacy and is now the largest international NGO at the forefront of capacity building and public education on technology and civil society. Stephanie co-curated the ground breaking touring exhibition, the Glass Room; enabling over 200,000 people worldwide to reflect on their relationship with technology and its impact on their environment.  In parallel, she now trains, teaches and consults on technology and design ethics. Stephanie was an Affiliate at Berkman Klein Centre for Internet and Society, Harvard University; a Visiting Industry Associate the Oxford Internet Institute, Oxford University; and awarded an Ashoka fellowship for her work as a social entrepreneur. Stephanie has a degree in History of Design from Manchester Metropolitan University and a Masters degree in Computer Related Design from the Royal College of Art, London.

Focus areas

I am currently involved in four main focus areas/interests with longer term projects on:

  • Digital Democracy: Data-driven Political Campaigning and Misinformation
  • What the Future Wants: an initiative exploring how digital technology shapes the lives of young people now and in the future
  • Crisis and Control: the use of big data, machine learning and AI to respond to short and long emergencies
  • Society as User: Ethics in designing technology that scales

Current Projects

Technologies of Hope

Tactical Tech

The Glassroom

Data Detox Kit

Publications

The Behavioural Surveillance Dilemma: Human Rights, Technology and the New Normal
Efficiency and Madness: Solving political, social and environmental problems with technology
Stephanie Hankey and Marek Tuszynski in collaboration with the Heinrich Boell Foundation, 2017
Nervous Systems: Quantified Life and the Social Question
Catalogue, Anselm Franke, Stephanie Hankey, Marek Tuszynski,
House of World Cultures, Berlin / Spector Books, 2016