Centenary Lecture calls for technology justice

A leading figure in the field of international development will present the latest in a series of public lectures to mark the centenary year of Aberystwyth University’s Department of Geography and Earth Sciences.

Simon Trace CBE is an independent consultant and writer on international development and technology.

He will deliver his lecture Technology Justice – why it’s time to reboot our relationship with technology at 7pm on Tuesday 14 March in the A6 lecture room of the Llandinam building on Penglais campus.

Based on his book Rethink, Retool, Reboot: Technology as if people and planet mattered (2016), he will argue that society needs to look again at the way it uses technology.

“Technology underpins human development. We need access to it to provide the very basics of a minimum standard of life – food, water, shelter, health and education. But today around a fifth of the world’s population lacks access to a set of technologies fundamental to a basic standard of living,” says Simon Trace.

“We need a new approach to governing the access to and use technology and a different set of drivers to realign our innovation systems to deliver technology that is socially useful and that addresses the key challenges of poverty and environmental sustainability. My presentation will consider how we might use a different frame of reference – Technology Justice – to provide a radically different approach to our oversight and governance of the development and use of technology.”

Ahead of the lecture at 7pm, there will a drinks reception at 6.30pm in the Think Tank of the Llandinam building.

About Simon Trace
Simon Trace is an independent consultant and writer on international development and technology. His book Rethink, Retool, Reboot: Technology as if people and planet mattered, was published by Practical Action Publishing in July 2016.

A chartered engineer with an MA in anthropology, Simon has 35 years’ experience of work in the international develop sector on access to basic services (water, sanitation and energy), sustainable food production, and natural resource management. He was the CEO of the international NGO Practical Action from 2005 to 2015 and, prior to that, the international director of the NGO WaterAid.

Simon is a trustee of the European Environment Foundation and has served on a number of international panels including the Steering Group for the Global Tracking Framework of the UN Secretary General’s Sustainable Energy for All initiative and the external advisory panel for the World Bank’s Readiness for Investment in Sustainable Energy index.

He is currently a member of the Strategic Advisory Group for the UK Government’s £1.5 billion Global Challenges Research Fund.

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