Maayan Roichman

Bio

Dr Maayan Roichman is a sociocultural anthropologist who studies cultural production and its intersections with politics, ethics, and subjectivity. Her research focuses on the subjective processes involved in creating cultural artefacts, such as media and technology. She is currently a Visiting Scholar at Stanford’s Graduate School of Education and an Azrieli Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Tel Aviv University. Dr Roichman completed her doctoral degree at the University of Oxford in 2022 as a Rhodes Scholar. Her thesis was an ethnography of a new artistic genre of ‘personal cinema’ in Israel, examining the professional development of young Israeli filmmakers and their relationships with the social systems and institutions in which they operate.

Her new research project investigates how culture shapes the development of conversational AI, with a particular focus on the perspectives of those involved in its creation. Her research sheds light on the views of developers regarding language, authenticity, and the future, and how these views are influenced by cultural contexts. By doing so, her work seeks to contribute to a deeper understanding of the social settings in which algorithmic outputs are constructed and the ways in which cultural values and practices impact technological development.