Technology and Society: Exploring Future Trends (Research Exchange with IIT Delhi)

The current period of technological disruption is leading to wide-ranging impacts across all facets of society, including changes in the way citizens work, live, and interact with each other and the state. There is an urgent need to advance global perspectives on managing the risks and opportunities associated with new and emerging technologies in a range of fields, including climate change adaptation and mitigation, bio-ethics, future of work and education in a new age of AI and automation, cyber-crime, and food production and distribution. The social sciences and humanities have a great deal to offer in terms of addressing questions around the societial impacts of technological change taking place across these and many other fields.

This project takes the form of a workshop and brings together considerable expertise from Australia and India to tackle some of the most challenging questions concerning the future of technology and society, and to establish and sustain a longer-tem cross-research network.

The workshop involves experts from key interdisciplinary fields from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi's (IITD) Department of Humanities and Social Sciences and UQ's Faculties of Social Science, Business, Economic, Law, Engineers, and Architecture and Information Technology, and will be hosted at the IITD in Delhi, India. This collaborative initiative will strengthen research leadership as well as future research potential by involving a mixed delegation of both senior and early-career UQ staff, in addition to doctoral students. 

The event provides an excellent opportunity to strengthen UQ's relationship with the IITD (a premier partner under the Global Strategy Framework) and is situated in one of UQ's priority countries. It will also provide an excellent basis for future research collaboration through competitive grants, including the contrinued cross-recruitment and joint supervision of Research Higher Degre (RHD) students.