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An Interdisciplinary Exploration of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in AI

Workshop Overview

This workshop will facilitate an in-depth interdisciplinary exploration of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in AI, focusing on the Asia-Pacific context. Although AI is often promoted as a tool for efficiency and better-informed decision-making, efforts to leapfrog with AI must be accompanied by careful attention to ethical concerns, particularly those related to DEI. This is especially salient in the Asia-Pacific context, where many AI systems adopted in education, employment, and healthcare are underpinned by Western social, cultural, and institutional assumptions. These assumptions often fail to reflect the region’s linguistic diversity, uneven digital infrastructure, and the risks associated with applying Western frameworks to local AI systems.

The workshop will explore the harms and benefits of AI in DEI, identify challenges and opportunities in embedding DEI across the AI lifecycle, examine how practitioners currently address DEI in AI, and articulate broad directions for future research and best practice development. This exploration will feed into a research agenda for the Asia-Pacific context, as an artefact co-produced by all workshop participants. The artefact will be published, disseminated, or shared in a format deemed appropriate by the collective of contributors. The workshop highlights DEI in AI as a socio-technical and governance challenge central to the design, implementation, and responsible deployment of relevant information systems. Therefore, it targets an interdisciplinary audience of researchers, practitioners, and policymakers concerned with the design, deployment, evaluation, and governance of AI systems.

Workshop Objectives

1. Explore the harms and benefits of AI in DEI: Examine the ways AI may both support and undermine DEI across different organisational and societal contexts.
2. Identify challenges and opportunities in embedding DEI in AI: Discuss what makes it difficult and what makes it possible to meaningfully incorporate DEI considerations across the AI lifecycle.
3. Share current practices for addressing DEI in AI: Exchange current experiences, frameworks, and strategies currently used in practice to address DEI in AI.
4. Synthesise broad directions for a future research agenda as a co-produced artefact: Synthesise key gaps, priorities, and emerging pathways for advancing more EDI in AI. This session brings together the discussions held throughout the workshop to co-produce a future research agenda for the Asia-Pacific context, co-authored by the collective of participants.

Workshop Co-Chairs

• Dr Misita Anwar is an Information Systems researcher and educator at Swinburne University of Technology. Her work examines digital inclusion, socio-technical systems, and responsible technology, with a focus on participation, equity, and everyday life in diverse communities. She has contributed to projects spanning cybersecurity awareness, participatory design, and community-centred innovation. Her current research investigates how diversity, equity, and inclusion can be more effectively embedded in the design, governance, and adoption of emerging digital and AI systems.
• Dr Jessica Bou Nassar is an interdisciplinary researcher working at the intersection of critical data studies, human-centred computing, and participatory research. She studies and thinks about socio-technical mechanisms that help policy-makers, civil society actors, and communities address asymmetrical social relations reinforced by data and technology. Jessica is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Swinburne University’s School of Business, Law, and Entrepreneurship in Australia. Her work scrutinises current AI/ML fairness practices to develop socio-technical processes that better align algorithmic fairness with public perceptions of fairness.
• A/Prof Joanne Evans is an archival and recordkeeping researcher and educator in the Faculty of Information Technology, Monash University. She is currently the lead of the Digital Transformation group in the Department of Human Centred Computing. Through an ARC Future Fellowship from 2015-18, she established the interdisciplinary Recordkeeping and the Rights of the Child Research Program to address the lifelong identity, memory and accountability needs of childhood out of home care. This involves the exploration of participatory design and research strategies to develop dynamic evidence and memory management frameworks, processes and systems supportive of multiple rights in records and recordkeeping.
• A/Prof Arif Perdana is an Associate Professor at Monash University and Director of Action Lab Indonesia, specializing in digital trust, strategy, and human-centered computing. With 20 years of experience, his research explores responsible AI and digital strategy and trust across finance, healthcare, and education. He has secured funding from institutions like Bank Indonesia and the Singapore Government. His work appears in journals like Information & Management, Electronic Markets, and Production, Planning and Control.

Fees

$0 (as it will be covered by the workshop organizers but the registration is limited to 20 participants)

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