Person

Tony Roberts

Tony Roberts

Digital Cluster Research Fellow, Institute of Development Studies

Dr. Tony Roberts is a Research Fellow in the Digital and Technology cluster at the Institute of Development Studies. He has been working at the intersection of digital technologies, international development and social justice since 1988 as a volunteer, lecturer, practitioner, trustee and researcher.

After lecturing in New Technology and Education at the University of East London, Tony founded and directed two international development agencies. He led Coda International and then Computer Aid International for a decade each. Tony then consolidated almost 25 years of field experience and learning about digital development in doctoral research with women using participatory video in Zambia.

He joined IDS after a period as a Research Fellow in the Gender Technology Lab of the United Nations University, Computing and Society research institute in Macau (UNU-CS). His research has been published in the form of peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, conference papers and book reviews.

For a full list of Tony’s publications and blogs please see his website Appropriating Technology.

Google Scholar
https://goo.gl/dcNZTf

Research

Project

Digital Authoritarianism

The project will contribute to arresting democratic regression by identifying, documenting and analysing existing and newly emerging elements of digital authoritarianism and the practices of digital citizenship that work best to mitigate or overcome them.

Project

The African Sousveillance Project

The Sousveillance Project will document the supply chain of digital technologies from the global North used for illegal surveillance in Africa and produce evidence to hold accountable the companies that benefit from violating citizens’ rights.

Opinions

Publications

Tony Roberts’s recent work

Past Event

Digital-ID: exclusions and adverse inclusion

Silvia Masiero’s new book Unfair-ID critically examines the claims that Digital-ID advances international development goals. Based on a decade of empirical research in India she uses a ‘data justice’ lens to analyse examples of digital exclusion as well as cases of ‘adverse...

6 February 2025