[Video] Massey Dialogues (University of Toronto, 29 Apr. 2020)

The Massey Dialogues – Prof. Antonio Casilli on COVID19 & Digital Labour: The Fate Of Last-Mile Workers

Wednesday, April 29 at 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm EDT 

Principal Nathalie Des Rosiers will take us to France’s struggles with the pandemic, in her interview with Antonio A. Casilli, a professor of sociology at Telecom Paris (Paris Grande École of Telecommunications), which will focus on civil liberties, privacy issues, digital workers in France during COVID-19 and particularly privacy invasion. They will be joined in conversation by Junior Fellow and former Don of Hall Julian Posada, who is pursuing his Ph.D. at the Faculty of Information at the University of Toronto and Brenda McPhail, Director of Privacy, Technology & Surveillance Project at Canadian Civil Liberties Association.

The Dialogues are open to the public – we invite everyone to join and take part in what will be a very informative online discussion. Participants are invited to submit questions to the speakers in real time via the youtube channel’s chat function as well as through Twitter with the hashtag #MasseyDialogues.

Click here Wednesday at 12:00pm EST to join this livestream event.

Antonio A. Casilli is a professor of sociology at Telecom Paris (Paris Grande École of Telecommunications, part of the Polytechnic Institute of Paris) and a researcher at the Interdisciplinary Institute on Innovation (i3), an institute of the French CNRS.

He is also an associate researcher at the LACI-IIAC (Critical Interdisciplinary Anthropology Center, formerly Edgar Morin Centre, of the School for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences – EHESS, Paris) and a faculty fellow et the Nexa Center for Internet and Society (an institute of the Polytechnic University of Turin).

Julian Posada is a Ph.D. candidate at the Faculty of Information. He also served as the 56th Don of Hall of Massey College during the 2019-2020 academic year. His research combines sociology, political economy, and software studies to explore ethical organizational models of labour platforms and the implementation of artificial intelligence into online work. He worked for the French National Centre for Scientific Research and holds a BA in the humanities from the University of Paris-Sorbonne and an MSc in economic sociology from the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, where he was an elected student representative and member of the fencing team.

Brenda McPhail is the Director of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association’s Privacy, Surveillance, and Technology Project. She guides CCLA’s interventions in key court cases that raise privacy issues, such as the recent Supreme Court of Canada cases R. v. Marakah and R v. Jones, which confirmed privacy rights in electronic communications. Her research agenda focuses on the social implications of technology, and recent work has focused on surveillance of dissent, government information sharing, digital surveillance, video surveillance, and rights issues raised by artificial intelligence. CCLA also has an education mandate, and Brenda works to develop resources and presentations to drive public awareness about the importance of privacy as both an individual and a social good. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Toronto, Faculty of Information.