June Brawner, PhD

I lead the data and AI policy portfolio at the Royal Society, the UK’s national scientific academy, shaping research‑informed policy programmes on data for science, privacy‑enhancing technologies, inclusive digital systems, AI governance and AI ethics.*

At the heart of my work is a long‑standing interest in how numbers and measurements are made, what they include or leave out, and how those choices shape the decisions we rely on—in science, policy, and public life. My academic training is in science and technology studies (with a focus on processes of quantification) and critical political ecology. That curiosity has taken me from smallholder farms in Appalachia, to laboratories and statistical systems, to Whitehall meeting rooms.

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I’ve contributed to national and international policy initiatives with partners including the OECD, United Nations, UK government and regulators, the Chinese Academy of Science, and the US National Academy of Science. My work has been cited in UK Parliament, featured in Time Magazine, and highlighted in initiatives such as the UK–US PETs Prize Challenge and the UN AI Advisory Body.

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I speak regularly on topics like data governance, privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs), and inclusive digital systems in forums like All Tech is Human, the International Association of Privacy Professionals, the Dubai Future Forum, Eyes Off Data Summit, and Computing on Encrypted Data (University of Leuven) — and as an invited speaker to policy-focussed events from the UK Embassy in Beijing, to ITT Bombay, to joint forums in Washington DC and at the University of Cambridge.

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I’ve held fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation, the Columbia University Council for European Studies, and the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Science and Policy.​​

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Before this, I had the fortune to study with Professor Bruno Latour (Forum Scientarium) and to work with Professor Virginia Nazarea (Ethnoecology and Biodiversity Laboratory), as well as Dr Jennifer Jo Thompson (Social Sustainability of Agrifood Systems Lab), at the University of Georgia.

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Policy work is systems change: understanding how structures are built and reshaped, and how power moves within them. As an anthropologist, I see policymaking and science as cultures in their own right, each with their own language, assumptions, and ways of making sense of the world. Recognising expertise in all its forms is a step toward epistemic justice.

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Outside of work, I sing with the Grammy Award-winning London Symphony Chorus and remain preoccupied by Hungarian wines and the politics of classification.

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Please drop me a line if any of this resonates.

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*‘AI ethics’ has become industry shorthand--’m interested in the systems, institutions, and norms that inform the use of data/digital technologies and the impact of these dynamics.

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​BACKGROUND​

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PhD Anthropology | The University of Georgia

MS Crop and Soil Science | The University of Georgia

MA Sociology and Social Anthropology | Central European University

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FELLOWSHIPS AND COURSES

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Centre for Science and Policy (CSaP) Fellow | University of Cambridge

Mellon-CES Fellow | Columbia University Council for European Studies

Fulbright Fellow | The Fulbright Foundation

 

Values in Public Policy | Oxford University, 2021

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Political Ecology with Bruno Latour | Forum Scientarium, 2017