This workshop will explore how values influence and are influenced by research practices, with a focus on the roles of AI systems, large datasets, and knowledge infrastructures. Together with the Empirical Ethics Team at IAS, which is simultaneously practising and further developing ideas of Empirical Ethics, Sabina Leonelli will inspire and guide discussions on the complex ethical implications and value tensions that arise vis-à-vis these emerging socio-technical arrangements. Participants are invited to critically examine how AI tools and research infrastructures shape ethics and vice versa, as well as to discuss practice-based insights into how these issues can be addressed through practical transformative interventions.
Understanding the ethical implications of AI and research infrastructures matters, as it determines how we produce, shape and enact knowledge, address systemic inequalities, and design research environments.
By engaging with these themes, this workshop can intervene in research practices to promote justice, equity, and integrity, ensuring that technological advancements align with human and societal values.

About the speaker 

Sabina Leonelli is a philosopher of science and technology, currently holding the Chair of Philosophy and the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology at the Technical University of Munich. She leads the Ethical Data Initiative and co-directs the TUM Public Science Lab. Until 2024, she served as Professor of Philosophy and History of Science and Director of the Centre for the Study of the Life Sciences (Egenis) at the University of Exeter, where she also led the research on "Data Governance, Openness, and Ethics" at the Institute for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (IDSAI). In addition to her leadership roles, Prof. Leonelli is an elected president of the International Society for History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology and a member of various scientific committees and editorial boards, including the Division of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science and Technology of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science and Technology.

About the organisers

Selin Gerlek is an assistant professor for philosophy of technology and politics at the University of Amsterdam. Her research focuses on digital citizenship, transformative processes in human-technology relations, mediated cultural practices, empirical (AI) ethics & value change, as well as embodied and hermeneutic relations. The traditional lines of thought she follows include (Post-)Phenomenology, Philosophy of Technology, Science and Technology Studies (STS), Pragmatism, Practice Theory, Political Philosophy, Feminist Philosophy, and Gender Theories. At the University of Amsterdam, she is co-PI in the new Research Priority Area "Shaping Interfaces Between Science and the Public", scientifique co-lead of the Research line "Empirical Ethics" at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), part of the research group "Digital Citizenship", member of the "Platform for the Ethics and Politics of Technology" (PEPT), and teaches in the Capacity Group Philosophical Tradition in Context at the department of philosophy.

Paula Helm is an Assistant Professor specializing in Critical AI Studies and Empirical Ethics, with a background in Anthropology and Peace and Conflict Research. Her interdisciplinary work spans STS, Media Studies, and Technology Ethics. She co-leads the Empirical Ethics Research Group at the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Studies and co-coordinates a Media Studies MA program on Cultural Data & AI, integrating Cultural Studies, AI Ethics, STS, and programming. Helm also leads a research project on Digital Transformation in the Amazon, merging indigenous and Western knowledge, featured in De Groene Amsterdammer and The Guardian. She serves on the UvA Ethics Committee, is co-PI of the HAVA Lab, an IAS Fellow and a member of the Certain-AI Network.

Programme