Distinguished Professor Genevieve Bell

Founder and Inaugural Director

Picture of Distinguished Professor Genevieve Bell

Cultural anthropologist. Futurist. Resident #bookfairy.#

Genevieve Bell is the founder and inaugural Director of the School of Cybernetics, Florence Violet McKenzie Chair, and a Distinguished Professor at the Australian National University (ANU) as well as a Vice President and Senior Fellow at Intel Corporation. She is a cultural anthropologist, technologist and futurist best known for her work at the intersection of cultural practice and technology development.

After completing her PhD in cultural anthropology at Stanford University in 1998, Genevieve spent 18 years in Silicon Valley helping guide Intel’s product development by developing the company’s social science and design research capabilities.

Genevieve established 3Ai in September 2017 at the ANU in collaboration with CSIRO’s Data61 with the mission of building a new branch of engineering to effectively and ethically manage the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on humanity through better design and management of technology. She is also the inaugural appointee to the Florence Violet McKenzie Chair at the ANU, a member of the Prime Minister’s National Science and Technology Council, a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering (ATSE), an Officer of the Order of Australia, and in 2020 she was named the first Engelbart Distinguished Fellow by SRI International. She also presented the highly acclaimed ABC Boyer Lectures for 2017, in which she investigated what it means to be human, and Australian, in a digital world.

Known for her immense love of books, Genevieve is also our resident #bookfairy! She is particularly good at summoning entire reading lists of books that you never knew you needed.

You can hear more from Genevieve by exploring her catalogue of talks on our YouTube channel.

You are on Aboriginal land.

The Australian National University acknowledges, celebrates and pays our respects to the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people of the Canberra region and to all First Nations Australians on whose traditional lands we meet and work, and whose cultures are among the oldest continuing cultures in human history.

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