Louise Hickman
Researcher, Ada Lovelace Institute and London School of Economics
Louise Hickman is an activist and scholar of communication. As a senior research officer for the JUST AI programme with the Ada Lovelace Institute and the Department of Communication and Media at the London School of Economics. In this position, she works alongside a team of researchers and practitioners to understand the social and ethical value of data-driven technologies, artificial intelligence (AI) and automated systems.
After graduating from King’s College London in 2011, Louise moved to the United States to complete her doctorate research in communication at the University of California, San Diego. Her work focused on the rise of automation and new information technologies for both disabled people and access workers. Louise has pioneered the concept of ‘access work’, which draws attention to the vital labour that stenographers perform to facilitate social interaction for deaf and hard-of-hearing people. She has spoken about her access work research at venues including the Microsoft Faculty Summit, and is working on her first book manuscript: The Automation of Access.
As a university instructor, Louise developed a Disability Justice Framework that has inspired students with disabilities to pursue their own academic careers. She has also worked on several creative projects, including most recently with researchers at the Smithsonian Collection at National History Museum (USA) on a collaborative project, Four Objects, which seeks to enliven the richness of audio description of archival items.