My work focuses on socio-technical AI governance, aiming at aligning AI with public interests.

Throughout my work, I am motivated by the question of how we can ensure that AI systems serve communities instead of being forced on them.

In my PostDoc research at the RC Trust, I am focusing on how private sector AI systems enter the public sector and which guardrails are in place. Importantly, I am interested in how we can harness the public procurement process to ensure that deployed systems are in line with public interests.

During my PhD at the University of Cambridge, I focused on stakeholder participation for responsible AI development in practice. More specifically, I investigated how the involvement of impacted communities and domain experts during the development process can lead to more responsible systems, as well as the barriers to such involvement in the currently established industry practice. Importantly, I focused on how this is different from traditional UX research which is mainly driven by commercial interests.

Throughout my work, I approach AI development (and thus its governance) as an ecosystem that comprises many different stakeholders — all with their own motives and drivers — and situated between many other technological, legal, economical, political, and social forces.

My background in Psychology, Human-Computer Interaction, and UX Research provides me with the tools and methods to conduct qualitative and quantitative research with humans, especially practitioners and experts.

As part of my research journey I am or have been part of following institutions: Research Centre Trustworthy Data Science & Security, University of Cambridge, Centre for the Future of Intelligence (Institute for Technology & Humanity), the Centre for Technology Management, the Alan Turing Institute, the CoALA lab at Carnegie Mellon University, UCLIC Interaction Centre at UCL, Eberhard Karls University, and the National University of Singapore. My entire academic career until 2024 has been supported by the Foundation of German Business (Studienstiftung der deutschen Wirtschaft).

Towards achieving that my research impacts the practice, I am collaborating with the NGO AI & Equality in an effort to promote a Human Rights-based approach to AI development.