Wikimedia Race and Knowledge Equity (WRKE) Fellow Project Update

Kainen Bell, PhD Candidate at the University of Illinois – Urbana Champaign, and 2023/2024 WRKE Wikimedia Foundation Fellow, recently completed the 2024 Summer Global Policy Fellowship at the Institute for Technology and Society (ITS) in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. He was one of ten researchers selected worldwide who share common interests in technology and its interfaces with law, and who want to expand their knowledge about the Brazilian technological context.

The intensive four-week program took place in July, and included a series of meetings with ITS partners in Rio de Janeiro, Brasília, and São Paulo including the Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation, Brazil’s National Data Protection Agency, NuBank, The Center for Security and Citizenship Studies (CESeC), and others concerned with AI Development and Regulation in Brazil. Bell also presented a lecture titled, “AI Ethics: Regulating Facial Recognition in Brazil” at the International School of Law and Technology offered by ITS in partnership with the University of Montréal.

Bell will remain in Brazil conducting his dissertation research which uncovers algorithmic biases and follows the work of digital rights activists and organizers of anti-surveillance campaigns in Brazil who protest facial recognition camera initiatives. His goal is to learn how Afro-Brazilian communities collaborate to resist and prevent the abuse of surveillance technologies in their neighborhoods.

The findings from his dissertation fieldwork and ITS Global Policy Fellowship contribute towards his WRKE fellowship project, which is to dedicate time into creating resources, documents, and publications to support the efforts of the national anti-surveillance campaign in Brazil.

(Kainen Bell on the far right with other ITS Global Policy Fellows outside of the National Soccer Stadium in Brasília, Brazil)