Stanford Humanities Center
Ananya Karthik is interested in the intersection of political theory, technology ethics, and human rights. She has worked as a Student Fellow at the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society for the past three years, helping create several tech ethics education initiatives, including Stanford’s first student-run conference on equitable design in technology. She currently serves as Course Coordinator for Embedded EthiCS (a program to incorporate ethics curriculum into Stanford CS courses), an Opinions editor fort the Stanford Daily, and Content Director for the Stanford Undergraduate Law Review. In her spare time, Ananya enjoys playing on the Stanford Women’s Ultimate Frisbee team, singing, writing, and listening to podcasts.
SHC Project
Digital Border Walls: Threats to Migrants’ Rights Posed by Border Enforcement Technologies
Advisor: Debra Satz
What is the focus of your current research?
My current research draws from feminist, postcolonial, and critical race theory to ask how we can build technology governance models on a theoretical foundation of intersectionality and the mitigation of historical injustice. When we conceptualize a “universal data subject” as an abstract, identity-less entity with data to provide and rights over that data, are we generalizing away differences among data subjects rather than acknowledging historical power dynamics? In which cases is the collective more relevant than the individual as a unit of ethical analysis in the digital world?
What drew you to this topic?
I’m interested in questioning normative assumptions that we’ve taken for granted, by centering the perspectives of minority groups who have historically been excluded from the narrative. During my study-abroad quarter at Oxford, I took a tutorial in human rights law, and was intrigued by human rights theory positing that the creation of a “Universal Human” necessarily comes with the creation of the “Other,” a lesser human or non-human who is unworthy of rights. Building on my tech ethics work over the past couple of years, in which I’ve noticed that questions of power and injustice are sometimes glossed over in the name of supposedly apolitical mathematical optimization, I wondered if, as we work on building digital governance regimes, we can adopt a more inclusive vision of universality as intersectionality, taking into account interlocking structures of oppression.
How are you conducting your research?
I’m drawing from feminist, postcolonial, critical race, and human rights legal theory to inform my philosophical reasoning. I’m exploring case studies of data protection regulation and digital colonialism to articulate tech ethics and policy applications.
What would people be surprised to learn about the topic you are working on?
Something that I was really struck by was that communities in the Global South often constitute the largest population of “data subjects” yet are inadequately represented in both the design and regulation of technology, and I hope to explore this phenomenon through postcolonial perspectives through my research.
In your view, why is it valuable to study this topic?
As algorithms become more pervasive in society, we risk encoding historical oppression under a veneer of technological neutrality. I think it’s important to interrogate the assumptions and values that we’re building into our technological systems in order to aspire towards a more inclusive digital future.
How is your honors thesis impacting you academically and/or personally?
This will be my first yearlong independent research study in political philosophy, and as I’m considering pursuing a doctorate in political theory, I hope that my honors thesis can help give me a taste of what research in this space could look like.
How do you anticipate the fellowship will be able to support your research?
I’m really excited to meet and learn from other undergraduate fellows and the Humanities Center community. My project is designed to be interdisciplinary, and some of my favorite political theory pieces are grounded in literary and performance studies scholarship, so I hope that through this fellowship I can improve my ability to incorporate diverse threads of humanistic inquiry into my research and writing.
