Alfie Greenwood

Department, Institution: Geography, UCL

UBEL Pathway: Human Geography and Sustainability

Supervisor: Professor Ayona Datta; Dr Artemis Skarlatidou

About Me

I hold a BA in Geography from the School of Geography at the University of Nottingham (2023), and an MASc degree in Global Sustainable Development from the University of Warwick (2024). I am a digital geographer, with particular interests in the intersection between the everyday and the digital. I am curious about the profound impacts pervasive, particularly AI, technologies are having on daily lives and spaces. My previous research has focused on the digital and carceral geographies of the UK’s COVID lockdown landscape, and the shifting dynamics of domesticity in the era of AI.

My Research

My research qualitatively explores how AI is reconstructing the ‘everyday arena’ of the home. AI-enabled technologies are transforming our relationships with and within the home whilst also fundamentally reconfiguring its notions as a private and intimate space to a site for surveillance and commercialisation. I will critically engage with consumers, industry-actors and the technologies themselves to examine how AI transforming everyday, domestic life and becoming inscribed in the home-(re)making process, to then unveil the implications of this, and what this means for how we geographically understand the home. It will offer a constructive view on AI, contributing to discussions on how these technologies and consumers can coexist in a sustainable manner.

Impact of My Research

AI transcends geographical disciplinary boundaries. This research forms part of a much broader, urgent focus on the profound global impacts of contemporary AI technologies, drawing across the social sciences, from economics to sociology, and beyond, with insight from computer science and robotics. It aligns with the ESRC’s strategic priorities, ensuring that social science positively guides the adoption of new technologies to effectively harness the opportunities presented. It further concurs government strategy, such as the recent ‘Bletchley Declaration’, contributing to the vision that AI should be designed, developed and deployed in a human-centric, trustworthy and responsible way. This research also has potential impact to inform AI policy and development, whilst also having high translatability into lay knowledge on AI in the home.