Dr. Tanja Ahlin explores what is a good life with technologies

Tanja Ahlin is an Anthropologist of Health and Technology, and a Science and Technology Studies (STS) scholar with a PhD from the University of Amsterdam. As a Research Fellow at Leiden University, awarded a Veni grant from the Dutch Research Council (NWO), she is investigating technology acceptance and resistance through the case of animal-shaped social robots in elder care. Her project, Paw Support, aims to support personalized long-term care, making space for new technologies as well as non-technological solutions to good care in times of scarce resources.

Previously, Tanja was a post-doctoral researcher in the'Human Factor in New Technologies' at Amsterdam Institute of Social Science Research, UvA. She is also affiliated with the Center for Digital Anthropology, UCL, and is a Research Fellow the Amsterdam Institute of Global Health and Development (AIGHD).

She also has a Master's degree in Health and Society in South Asia from Heidelberg University (Germany), a Bachelors of Anthropology from Athabasca University (Canada) and a Bachelors of Translation (English, French, Slovenian) from the University of Ljubljana (Slovenia).

Tanja's book Calling Family: Digital Technologies and the Making of Transnational Care Collectives (Rutgers University Press, 2023) explores how digital technologies shape family care at a distance when living in the same place is not the most feasible option.

About Calling Family

"I am deeply curious about the impact of technologies on people and about what it means to be human in a technologically enhanced world. I am passionate about exploring the potential of digital technologies and artificial intelligence to improve (health)care. Given the exponential technological progress, I find it urgent to address ethical design and application of technologies through ethnographic methods."

Tanja writes and edits the Anthropology of Data and AI blog to inform audience beyond academia about the most relevant social science insights on technology.

On the list of Tanja's publications are book chapters in The Routledge Handbook of Medical Anthropology and Viral Loads: Coronavirus, Inequality and an Anthropology of the Future, and academic articles in journals such as Social Science and Medicine; Nature: Humanities and Social Sciences Communications; Social Science and Medicine; Sociology Compass; Current Anthropology; Medical Anthropology Quarterly; Gender, Place and Culture; Medical Anthropology; Medicine, Anthropology, Theory; and Anthropology and Medicine.

As a translator into Slovenian, she has published over 20 books, including poetry by Mary Oliver, popular science books on digital technologies by Nicolas Carr and Chris Anderson, ethnographic diaries, biographies and novels.

As a lecturer, Tanja teaches at all levels (BA, MA, PhD, public talks) on interdisciplinary teamwork, qualitative methods, digital technologies, social robots, empirical ethics in healthcare, and migration and transnational family care.

Tanja's PhD was funded through a personal grant TransGlobalHealth, awarded by the Educational, Audiovisual & Culture Executive Agency (EACEA) of the European Commission. She's also received research, event and travel funding from the Responsible Digital Transformations at UvA, the Dutch Research Council (NWO), Amsterdam Institute of Social Science Research and several other institutions.

Among other academic recognitions, Tanja's work has received:

• General Anthropology Division (GAD) Prize for Exemplary Cross-Field Scholarship - Honorable mention, as a runner-up to Lila Abu-Lughod, American Anthropological Association;

• Jacob Climo Award of the Association of Anthropology, Gerontology and the Life Course;

• Science, Technology and Medicine/Society for Medical Anthropology Graduate Student Paper Prize;

• Best PhD pitch award, Amsterdam Institute of Social Science Research.