Genevieve Bell is an
Australian
Australian(s) may refer to:
Australia
* Australia, a country
* Australians, citizens of the Commonwealth of Australia
** European Australians
** Anglo-Celtic Australians, Australians descended principally from British colonists
** Aboriginal A ...
cultural anthropologist
Cultural anthropology is a branch of anthropology focused on the study of cultural variation among humans. It is in contrast to social anthropology, which perceives cultural variation as a subset of a posited anthropological constant. The portman ...
best known for her work at the intersection of cultural practice research and technological development (including as a pioneer in the field of
futurist
Futurists (also known as futurologists, prospectivists, foresight practitioners and horizon scanners) are people whose specialty or interest is futurology or the attempt to systematically explore predictions and possibilities abou ...
research), and for being an industry pioneer of the
user experience field. Bell was the innagural director of the
Autonomy, Agency and Assurance Innovation Institute (3Ai), which was co-founded by the
Australian National University
The Australian National University (ANU) is a public research university located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Its main campus in Acton encompasses seven teaching and research colleges, in addition to several national academies and ...
(ANU) and
CSIRO
The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) is an Australian Government
The Australian Government, also known as the Commonwealth Government, is the national government of Australia, a federal parliamentar ...
’s
Data61
The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) is an Australian Government agency responsible for scientific research.
CSIRO works with leading organisations around the world. From its headquarters in Canberra, CSIRO ...
, and a Distinguished Professor of the ANU College of Engineering and Computer Science.
In 2021, she became Director of the new ANU School of Cybernetics. She also holds the university's
Florence Violet McKenzie
Florence Violet McKenzie ( Granville; 28 September 1890 – 23 May 1982), affectionately known as "Mrs Mac", was Australia's first female electrical engineer, founder of the Women's Emergency Signalling Corps (WESC) and lifelong promot ...
Chair
and is the first
SRI International
SRI International (SRI) is an American nonprofit scientific research institute and organization headquartered in Menlo Park, California. The trustees of Stanford University established SRI in 1946 as a center of innovation to support economic d ...
Engelbart Distinguished Fellow.
Bell is also a Senior Fellow and Vice President at
Intel
Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...
. She is widely published, and holds 13 patents.
Early life
Daughter of renowned Australian anthropologist,
Diane Bell, Genevieve Bell was born in
Sydney
Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mountain ...
and raised in a range of Australian communities, including
Melbourne
Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...
,
Canberra
Canberra ( )
is the capital city of Australia. Founded following the federation of the colonies of Australia as the seat of government for the new nation, it is Australia's largest inland city and the eighth-largest city overall. The ci ...
, and in several Aboriginal Communities in the
Northern Territory
The Northern Territory (commonly abbreviated as NT; formally the Northern Territory of Australia) is an states and territories of Australia, Australian territory in the central and central northern regions of Australia. The Northern Territory ...
.
Bell attended university in the United States, where she graduated from
Bryn Mawr College
Bryn Mawr College ( ; Welsh: ) is a women's liberal arts college in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania. Founded as a Quaker institution in 1885, Bryn Mawr is one of the Seven Sister colleges, a group of elite, historically women's colleges in the United St ...
in 1990 with a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Philosophy in anthropology. Bell went on to attend
Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
in
Palo Alto, California
Palo Alto (; Spanish language, Spanish for "tall stick") is a charter city in the northwestern corner of Santa Clara County, California, United States, in the San Francisco Bay Area, named after a Sequoia sempervirens, coastal redwood tree kno ...
, for graduate studies.
In 1993, she earned her master's degree from Stanford, followed by a PhD in 1998, both in anthropology.
Her doctoral research focused on the
Carlisle Indian Industrial School
The United States Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, generally known as Carlisle Indian Industrial School, was the flagship Indian boarding school in the United States from 1879 through 1918. It took over the historic Carlisle ...
which operated in rural Pennsylvania in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Career
From 1996 to 1998, Bell taught anthropology and
Native American Studies at
Stanford University
Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...
, in both the department of anthropology and department of anthropological sciences, as well as in the continuing studies program.
She was recruited from her faculty position by
Intel Corporation
Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 series ...
in 1998 to help build out their nascent social-science research competency in the advanced research and development labs.
She was based at one of the company's campuses in
Hillsboro, Oregon
Hillsboro ( ) is the fifth-largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon and is the county seat of Washington County. Situated in the Tualatin Valley on the west side of the Portland metropolitan area, the city hosts many high-technology companies, ...
, where she worked as a cultural anthropologist studying how different cultures around the globe used technology.
She and her colleagues helped re-orient Intel to a more market-inspired and experience-driven approach and she is widely credited with establishing User Experience as a recognised competency at Intel.
She started Intel's first User Experience Group in 2005, as part of Intel's Digital Home Group. The company named her an Intel Fellow, their highest technical rank, in November 2008 for her work in the Digital Home Group. She rejoined the advanced research and development labs in 2010, when Intel made her the director of their newly forming User Experience Research group.
This group was Intel's first fully integrated user experience research and development group; they worked on questions of big data, smart transportation, next generation image technology and ideas about fear and wonder.
After steering that group to a range of successes inside and outside the company, she was made a vice president in 2014 and senior fellow in 2016.
Bell's impact has been recognised repeatedly outside Intel. In 2010, she was named one of the Top 25 Women in Technology to Watch by
AlwaysOn and as one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business by Fast Company.
In 2012, Bell was inducted to the
Women in Technology International
Women in Technology International (WITI) is an organization promoting the achievements of women in technology and extending support, opportunities, and inspiration. It was founded by Carolyn Leighton in 1989 as the International Network of Women in ...
Hall of Fame
and in 2013, she was named
Anita Borg
Anita Borg (January 17, 1949 – April 6, 2003) was an American computer scientist. She founded the Institute for Women and Technology and the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing.
Education and early life
Borg was born Anita Borg Naf ...
’s Women of Vision in Leadership. In 2014, she was included in Elle Magazine's first list of influential women in technology
and also included in a new exhibit at London's Design Museum profiling 25 women from around the world.
Her first book, ''Divining a Digital Future: Mess and Mythology in Ubiquitous Computing'', written in collaboration with
Paul Dourish
Paul Dourish (born 1966) is a computer scientist best known for his work and research at the intersection of computer science and social science. Born in Scotland, he holds the Steckler Endowed Chair of Information and Computer Science at the ...
, is an exploration of the social and cultural aspects of
ubiquitous computing
Ubiquitous computing (or "ubicomp") is a concept in software engineering, hardware engineering and computer science where computing is made to appear anytime and everywhere. In contrast to desktop computing, ubiquitous computing can occur using ...
, with a particular focus on the disciplinary and methodological issues that have shaped the ubiquitous computing research agenda. The book was published by
MIT Press
The MIT Press is a university press affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts (United States). It was established in 1962.
History
The MIT Press traces its origins back to 1926 when MIT publish ...
in 2011.
An earlier essay from 2007 by Bell, also co-authored with Dourish, "“Resistance is Futile”: Reading Science Fiction Alongside Ubiquitous Computing", has been widely cited as an inspiration for, or a key influence on, the emergence of the field of
design fiction.
Bell was also a
Thinker in Residence for
South Australia
South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a state in the southern central part of Australia. It covers some of the most arid parts of the country. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories ...
from 2008 to 2010. Her visiting appointment was intended to help guide government policy surrounding a new national broadband initiative. Bell conducted ethnographic research and developed new innovative research methods to identify barriers to adoption and drivers around broadband uptake. Her final report, “Getting Connected, staying connected: exploring the role of new technology in Australian society” is available online.
After 18 years as Intel's resident anthropologist in
Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo County ...
, Bell returned to Australia in 2017 as the first of five appointments under the ANU
Vice-Chancellor Brian Schmidt's Entrepreneurial Fellows scheme.
She is a distinguished professor at the
ANU College of Engineering and Computer Science, where she is focusing on "exploring how to bring together data science, design thinking and ethnography to drive new approaches in engineering; and ... exploring the questions of what it means to be human in a data-driven economy and world".
She is the university's inaugural appointee of the
Florence Violet McKenzie
Florence Violet McKenzie ( Granville; 28 September 1890 – 23 May 1982), affectionately known as "Mrs Mac", was Australia's first female electrical engineer, founder of the Women's Emergency Signalling Corps (WESC) and lifelong promot ...
Chair, named in honour of Australia's first female electrical engineer.
In 2017, the ANU announced a major 10-year plan to drive the expansion of its program in engineering and computer science. The expansion in part was to be led by Bell as the director of the newly founded Autonomy, Agency and Assurance Institute, to be known as the 3A Institute or 3Ai, co-founded by Australian National University and
CSIRO
The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) is an Australian Government
The Australian Government, also known as the Commonwealth Government, is the national government of Australia, a federal parliamentar ...
’s Data61, Australia's largest data innovation network. The 3A Institute brings together a diverse team from a range of disciplines to tackle complex problems around artificial intelligence, data and technology and managing their impact on humanity.
In October 2017, Bell presented the ABC's 2017
Boyer Lectures
The Boyer Lectures are a series of talks by prominent Australians, presenting ideas on major social, scientific or cultural issues, and broadcast on ABC Radio National.
The Boyer Lectures began in 1959 as the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Commis ...
, interrogating what it means to be human, and Australian, in a digital world. Bell joins the list of prominent Australians selected each year by the ABC since 1959 to present the annual Boyer Lectures and stimulate a national conversation on social, cultural and political issues of contemporary Australian society.
Since returning to Australia, Bell's expertise in the field of AI development and regulation has been recognised by government and industry. At the 2016 Advance Awards, Bell received the Award for Technology Innovation and Overall 2016 Advance Global Australian Award. In October 2018, Bell was elected as a fellow of the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering (ATSE), a not-for-profit organisation which brings together leading minds in technology and engineering from academia, government and industry sectors. She was also appointed to the National Science and Technology Advisory Council among other members including Nobel Laureate and ANU Vice-Chancellor Brian Schmidt and Chair Prime Minister Scott Morrison. The council is responsible for providing expert advice to the prime minister and other ministers on science and technology challenges facing Australia.
In January 2019, Bell was appointed as an independent non-executive director of the
Commonwealth Bank of Australia
The Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), or CommBank, is an Australian multinational bank with businesses across New Zealand, Asia, the United States and the United Kingdom. It provides a variety of financial services including retail, busine ...
Board.
On January 22, 2020, Bell was named the first Engelbart Distinguished Fellow by SRI International. The fellowship is named after
Douglas C. Engelbart, a pioneer of modern computing, and recognises 'visionaries who are disrupting the traditional way we interact with and view technology' from around the globe.
Shortly after, Bell was appointed an
Officer of the Order of Australia
The Order of Australia is an honour that recognises Australian citizens and other persons for outstanding achievement and service. It was established on 14 February 1975 by Elizabeth II, Queen of Australia, on the advice of the Australian Gove ...
in the
2020 Australia Day Honours
The 2020 Australia Day Honours are appointments to various orders and honours to recognise and reward good works by Australian citizens. The list was announced on 26 January 2020 by the Governor General of Australia, David Hurley.
The Australia ...
for distinguished service to education, particularly to the social sciences and cultural anthropology. That same year she was also elected as a Honorary Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.
In 2021 Genevievewas appointed Director of the new School of Cybernetics at the Australian National University, which as well as housing the 3A Institute, will build out capacity in Systems and Design.
References
External links
ANU School of Cybernetics3Ai WebsiteGenevieve Bell, ANU biography
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bell, Genevieve
Living people
Australian anthropologists
Australian women anthropologists
Bryn Mawr College alumni
Intel people
People from Hillsboro, Oregon
Scientists from Sydney
Stanford University alumni
Year of birth missing (living people)
Futurologists
Australian National University faculty
Officers of the Order of Australia
Cyberneticists
Women cyberneticists