Bio
Antonella Maia Perini is a Research Associate at the Turing’s Public Policy Programme and a Visiting Research Associate at the Digital Environment Research Institute (DERI) at Queen Mary University of London. She is an interdisciplinary social scientist, specialising in internet studies and AI policy and governance. She has broad experience in project management, research and stakeholder engagement.
Antonella analyses the AI policy, governance and regulatory landscape, identifying emerging trends, risks and opportunities. Her recent work includes research on emerging AI governance initiatives, with a focus on foundation models and generative AI, and a comprehensive analysis of the international generative AI policy and governance landscape published in the Harvard Data Science Review's special issue on Generative AI. She has also been central to the call and review of the Policy Forum contributions to the special issue. Furthermore, Antonella has co-developed AI ethics and governance frameworks, including refining and piloting the Council of Europe’s Human Rights, Democracy, and the Rule of Law Impact Assessment for AI systems (HUDERIA) and informing AI governance models in the context of the collaboration between UNESCO and the Turing. She has also co-developed the AI Ethics and Governance in Practice programme; a bespoke programme that provides the public sector with the skills, tools and actionable end-to-end governance framework required to adopt cutting-edge practices in responsible and trustworthy AI innovation for optimal public benefit. The programme is an integral part of the UK’s National AI Strategy and has served as a model framework for public sector organisations, international organisations, industry and civic organisations engaged in AI innovation and adoption. In her role, Antonella has led the Turing’s engagements with external partners to pilot the content. She contributes with ongoing work to promote outreach and uptake of the governance framework, including public engagement across public sector organisations, civil society, academic institutions, standards developing organisations, and private companies in the UK and internationally.
Prior to joining the Turing, Antonella led projects on democratic innovation and collaborative governance at the Latin American think tank Asuntos del Sur, where she worked with grassroots organisations, activists and policymakers. Between 2017 and 2020, she helped to design and build the operating structure for the Academy of Political Innovation, a training platform for social and political leaders in Latin America. Over the programme's first three years, more than 7,000 social and political leaders participated in the courses, and she expanded the training initiatives through collaborations with civil society organisations, subnational governments and cooperation agencies. She later coordinated a consortium of seven think tanks and universities in an evidence-based research project in Latin America exploring the governance models in the responses to COVID-19. She also participated in projects and initiatives on open government, political innovation, digital rights and internet governance. Furthermore, Antonella assisted research on disinformation and hate speech at the Oxford Internet Institute and contributed to research led by the Centre of Technology and Society (CETyS) and Centro Latam Digital that aimed to understand the levels of awareness and implementation of AI ethical principles in start-ups developing AI systems in Latin America. She co-founded Youth IGF Argentina and, between 2018 and 2019, was the Latin America and Caribbean Representative at the Executive Committee of the Non-Commercial Users Constituency of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.
Antonella holds a BA in International Relations from Universidad de San Andrés (Argentina), an MA in International Relations from the University of Bologna, and an MSc in Social Science of the Internet from the University of Oxford. Her MSc dissertation sought to understand how Latin American civil society organisations engage with discussions about ethics and governance of AI in Internet Governance arrangements and how they interact with each other and the broader ecosystem.
Research interests
At the Turing, Antonella’s research of the sociotechnical implications of data-driven and AI technologies has informed evidence-based analyses. This includes a rapid review of health equity in AI-enabled medical devices, commissioned by an Independent Review Panel appointed by the Department of Health and Social Care, the development of a critical framework to inform the assessment of the individual, social, and biospheric socio-technical risks and harms of these technologies, and the analysis of the impacts of generative AI on freelance creative workers in the UK in the context of the Crafting Responsive Assessments of AI & Tech-Impacted Futures (CREAATIF) project. Antonella's contributions have also informed the outputs of the Advancing Data Justice Research and Practice project.