June Brawner, PhD

I currently serve as Senior Policy Adviser for Data and Digital Technologies at the Royal Society, the UK’s national scientific academy, where I lead programmes related to data for science, privacy enhancing technologies, inclusive digital technologies, and AI ethics*.

​

My academic roots are in political ecology and science and technology studies–in particular, I study processes of quantification. This curiosity has taken me from smallholder farms in Appalachia to Whitehall meeting rooms, where I’m interested in how numbers and measurements get made, what they include or leave out, and how that shapes the decisions we rely on.

​

I’ve contributed to national and international policy initiatives with partners including the OECD, United Nations, UK government and regulators, the Chinese Academies of Sciences, and the US National Academy of Science. My work has been cited in UK Parliament and featured in multilateral initiatives such as the UK–US PETs Prize Challenge.

​

I’ve held fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation, the Columbia University Council for European Studies, and the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Science and Policy.

​

Before this, I had the fortune to study with Professor Bruno Latour (Forum Scientarium) and to work with Professor Virginia Nazarea (Ethnoecology and Biodiversity Laboratory), as well as Dr Jennifer Jo Thompson (Social Sustainability of Agrifood Systems Lab), at the University of Georgia.

​

Outside of work, I sing with the Grammy Award-winning London Symphony Chorus and remain preoccupied by Hungarian wines and the politics of classification.

​

Please drop me a line if any of this is up your alley.

​

*‘AI ethics’ has become industry shorthand, which I use somewhat reluctantly (tl;dr: ethics is not a feature of AI; AI is not a monolith). I’m interested in the systems, institutions, and norms that inform the use of data/digital technologies and the impact of these dynamics.

​

​

DOWNLOAD CV​

​

​

AT A GLANCE​

​

PhD Anthropology | The University of Georgia

MS Crop and Soil Science | The University of Georgia

MA Sociology and Social Anthropology | Central European University

​

FELLOWSHIPS AND COURSES

​

Centre for Science and Policy (CSaP) Fellow | University of Cambridge

Mellon-CES Fellow | Columbia University Council for European Studies

Fulbright Fellow | The Fulbright Foundation

 

Values in Public Policy | Oxford University, 2021

Political Ecology with Bruno Latour | Forum Scientarium, 2017