Hosted by Tohatoha Aotearoa Commons in association with InternetNZ, this event is the first stop on Prof. Eubanks’ first ever New Zealand visit. It will be an opportunity to meet the author and hear her perspective on how data mining, policy algorithms, and predictive risk models are increasingly affecting vulnerable people in society – the poor and working-class. In an age where New Zealand is increasingly moving towards automation of public systems and social services, join us to consider the important question of whether inequality is also becoming automated in Aotearoa, and what can be done about it. Discussion and Q+A to be led by Tohatoha CEO, Mandy Henk.

Virginia Eubanks is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University at Albany, SUNY. In addition to Automating Inequality, she is the author of several other books, including Digital Dead End: Fighting for Social Justice in the Information Age; and co-editor, with Alethia Jones, of Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around: Forty Years of Movement Building with Barbara Smith. Her writing about technology and social justice has appeared in Scientific American, The Nation, Harper’s, and Wired. For two decades, Eubanks has worked in community technology and economic justice movements. She was a founding member of the Our Data Bodies Project and a 2016-2017 Fellow at New America. She lives in Troy, NY.