Digital democracy and Kenya: A conversation with Nanjala Nyabola and Shobita Parthasarathy
International Economic Development Program (IEDP)
Date & time
Location
This is a Virtual Event.
Join IEDP for a conversation with Nanjala Nyabola and Shobita Parthasarathy, as they discuss the implications of our digital era on politics and policy in Kenya.
Nanjala Nyabola is a writer, political analyst, and activist based in Nairobi, Kenya. Nyabola writes extensively about African society and politics, technology, international law, and feminism for academic and non-academic publications. Her first book Digital Democracy, Analogue Politics: How the Internet Era is Transforming Politics in Kenya (Zed Books, 2018) was described as "a must read for all researchers and journalists writing about Kenya today". Reframing digital democracy from the African perspective, Nyabola’s ground-breaking work opens up new ways of understanding the current global online era. Her work has been featured in publications including African Arguments, Al Jazeera, Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy (magazine), The Guardian, New African, The New Humanitarian, The New Inquiry, New Internationalist, and World Policy Journal.
Shobita Parthasarathy is Professor of Public Policy and Women's Studies, and Director of the Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program, at the University of Michigan. She studies the governance of emerging science and technology as well as the politics of evidence and expertise in policymaking, from a comparative and international perspective. She is the author of numerous articles and two books. Her second book, Patent Politics: Life Forms, Markets, and the Public Interest in the United States and Europe, (University of Chicago Press, 2017) won the 2018 Robert K. Merton Prize from the American Sociological Association's Science, Knowledge, and Technology section. Her first book, Building Genetic Medicine: Breast Cancer, Technology, and the Comparative Politics of Health Care (MIT Press, 2007) helped to inform the 2013 US Supreme Court case over gene patents.
