Wanstreet Wins Mozilla Open Science Fellowship

With Mozilla, CMDS Fellow Rian Wanstreet will be working with global stakeholders to explore ethical and sustainable best practice models of Big Data use in agriculture.

Mozilla’s fellowship program fuels the broader internet health movement, with providing funding, amplification, and networking opportunities to individuals devoted to privacy, inclusion, and openness online. According to the statement published by Mozilla, the 29 new fellows “will debunk myths about AI and research new models of data governance. They will investigate the intersection of biometrics and migration, and interrogate the consequences of using AI in advertising. They will build tools to thwart online disinformation, will train network engineers in South Asia, and will conduct PhD research toward a more open and secure Internet of Things.”

CMDS Fellow Rian Wanstreet is also among the new Mozilla Fellows. She will be working with global stakeholders to explore ethical and sustainable best practice models of Big Data use in agriculture. She will also analyze the quickly-developing AI/ML infrastructures and technologies. Her particular concern is ensuring that power inequities are not reproduced and reinforced within new algorithmic sociotechnical systems.

Rian Wanstreet is a PhD Candidate at the University of Washington studying the growth of 'Precision Agriculture' in the United States and beyond. Using a multi-modal qualitative and critical methodological toolset, she conducts artefactual and ethnographic research on the discursive and material ecologies emerging around datafication and automation in Ag. She pays special attention to the security and environmental ramifications of implementation and adoption. In 2019/2020, she is also a University of Washington Presidential Fellow.

Prior to matriculation at UW, Rian worked at the international digital rights NGO Access Now, where she launched a multi-million dollar small grants program and ran the human rights / technology conference 'RightsCon'. She was an European Commision Erasmus Mundus Scholar, and has an MA in Public Policy from the University of York and an MA in Public Administration from Central European University, where she continues to maintain a non-residential Fellowship at the Center for Media, Data, and Society.