Four Scholars speak about leading with courage in today's world at this year's Cambridge Festival.
Four Gates Cambridge Scholars are debating how you lead with courage in an age of autocracy, misinformation and lack of trust at this year’s Cambridge Festival.
The speakers are:
Ella McPherson [2004] is Professor of the Sociology of Media and Technology, Co-Director of the Centre of Governance and Human Rights at the University of Cambridge and Deputy Head of Cambridge’s School of the Humanities and Social Sciences. Her research is concerned with symbolic struggles surrounding media and technology in times of transition. This includes human rights fact-finding in the digital age, everyday resistance to Big Tech in the UK, and the rise of generative AI in academia. In 2020-21 she was Special Adviser to the House of Lords’ Digital and Communications Committee for their Freedom of Expression Online Inquiry. She has also contributed research on technology and human rights practice as well as on the digitally-mediated freedom of assembly to the United Nations.
D’Arcy Williams [2019] is a global child health and food systems expert and CEO of Bite Back. A former UNICEF diplomat, he brings over a decade of experience in public health, strategic advocacy, and youth engagement across +20 countries. He played a key role in shaping and scaling UNICEF’s global strategy to prevent childhood obesity, with a strong focus on transforming food systems and building youth-led advocacy movements. A Gates-Cambridge Scholar, D’Arcy holds a Master’s of Public Policy – specializing in Child Health and Food Policy – from the University of Cambridge, and is pursuing a Doctorate of Public Health in Epidemiology & Population Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Cillian Ó Fathaigh [2014] is Assistant Professor in Philosophy at the Jagiellonian University Kraków. He is also co-founder of Pulc; an AI tutor and teacher assistant focused on addressing educational inequality and supporting minority languages. Pulc has now corrected 50,000 essays. His research focuses on political philosophy, particularly the political impacts of the digital and more recently AI. In January, his research network produced the largest survey to date of (European) academics on the impact of generative AI on higher education.
Dan Greenfield [2005] is co-founder of PetaGene, a leading genomic data management company in use globally by hospitals, pharma companies, and clinical labs (including the NHS). After its acquisition by Storj Labs, he is now their VP of Engineering. Prior to this he spent many years in the Bay Area designing GPUs, parallel processors and networking hardware. On the software side, his products have won numerous industry awards and accolades.
Gates Cambridge Scholars are chosen for their academic brilliance, their commitment to improving the lives of others and their leadership capacity. This year sees the launch of the Scholarship’s Leading with Purpose programme and its successful podcast, now in its third series, is also focusing on different aspects of leadership, including how to lead ethically and how to lead for the long term in a short-term world.
The event at Bill Gates Sr. House runs from 6-7.30pm on 19th March. More information on the Cambridge Festival page.
*Photo by Oliver Cole on Unsplash
