UWA Tech & Policy Lab
(formerly Minderoo)
UWA Law School - University of Western Australia
My Role as a Visiting Scholar at the UWA Tech & Policy Lab (2021-2022)
I have worked on commission as a visual communication professional, researcher and writer for research organisations internationally. In this capacity my role has been to research, visualise and map networks of digital data extraction and their policy implications in contexts including online targeted advertising, the Metaverse, and the Industrial IoT. This has been in support of public interest research campaigns with a focus on the personal data economy, the datafication of work, automated decision-making, AI and the environment, and digital rights advocacy (Reset.tech Australia 2023; The UWA Tech & Policy Lab, University of Western Australia 2022; The Autonomy Institute, UK, 2020-2021).
I was invited to join the UWA Tech and Policy Lab as a Visiting Scholar and Honorary Fellow. My work for Data Archeogram (The Autonomy Institute, 2021) was commended by the lab directors for its originality and its efficacy in mapping data extraction ecosystems in an accessible manner. As a Visiting Scholar I had the opportunity to work with an interdisciplinary team of lawyers, social policy experts and technologists to research the risks presented by excessive data collection in the contexts of professional sport and the Metaverse.
I contributed to fortnightly lab meetings and peer reviews where I had the opportunity to provide feedback and guidance to PhD and MA candidates. I undertook qualitative research to help visualise and map data extraction ecosystems in various iterations of the Internet of Things. I led the visual communication strategy for a report published by the Australian Academy of Science in association with the UWA (Minderoo) Tech & Policy Lab in April 2022 (see below).
The UWA Tech & Policy Lab Team 2021-2022
"Getting ahead of the game: athlete data in professional sport"
13 April 2022
An expert working group was established collaboratively by the Australian Academy of Science and The University of Western Australia’s Minderoo Tech & Policy Lab, to include domain experts in sports science and sports medicine, artificial intelligence, law, policy, social science and governance.
Authors: Julia Powles, Jacqueline Alderson, Jason Weber et. al.
Visual strategy lead and illustrator: Armelle Skatulski
Australia needs to start a conversation about data governance in professional sport, including creating appropriate legal, organisational, and ethical limits around athlete data collection and use.
This discussion paper, ‘Getting ahead of the game: Athlete data in professional sport’, was developed by the Australian Academy of Science and the Minderoo Tech & Policy Lab at UWA Law School, with support from the Frontier Technology Initiative of Minderoo Foundation.
The discussion paper reveals that Australian professional sports are collecting more personal information about athletes than they can meaningfully deal with. Concerningly, this data—which is personal, unique, and intimately revealing about individual athletes—amounts to excessively more information than has been proven to be useful. What are the stakes of exponential and unregulated growth in human monitoring for the workplace of professional sport, and beyond? What are the challenges, the opportunities, and the imperatives to act?
Illustration © 2022 Armelle Skatulski/UWA Tech & Policy Lab.
