Dr Garfield Benjamin

I am an Assistant Teaching Professor at University of Cambridge Professional and Continuing Education (PACE), where I co-lead the MSt in AI Ethics and Society. My work focuses on social issues created by – or made worse by – technology, particularly AI, data, surveillance and related systems. One of the great things about teaching and researching this topic is that I get to interact with so many different people. Our academic team includes Historians, Philosophers, Lawyers and more. Our students come from industry, government and third sector (to name but a few). I also get to interact with technologists, policy-makers and thinkers, and share my insights on a range of topics related to how AI and other technologies are shaping our world.

Before joining PACE, I was a Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Solent University, and before that I worked for the Birmingham Centre for Cyber Security and Privacy. I completed my PhD at the University of Wolverhampton in 2014, as part of the Digital Technology Theory and Practice group. My academic journey has moved across several disciplines, as the issues I am most interested in tend to escape rigid boundaries and need us to apply different methods. That is one reason why I’m so passionate about working at PACE, with colleagues from across subjects, and particularly leading the MSt AI Ethics and Society that draws on a ranges of different perspectives.