'In Case of Emergency: How Technologies Mediate Crisis and Normalize Inequality'

Elizabeth Ellcessor is a Miller Center faculty senior fellow and an associate professor of media studies at the University of Virginia. Her research engages questions of access to media and technology, with particular attention to disability and accessibility. Her book Restricted Access: Media, Disability, and the Politics of Participation (New York University Press, 2016) provides a cultural history of digital media accessibility from both policy and user perspectives.

Aynne Kokas is the C.K. Yen Professor at the Miller Center and an associate professor of media studies at the University of Virginia. Kokas’ research examines Sino-U.S. media and technology relations. Her book Trafficking Data: How China is Winning the Battle for Digital Sovereignty (Oxford University Press, October 2022) argues that exploitative Silicon Valley data governance practices help China build infrastructures for global control. Kokas is a non-resident scholar at Rice University’s Baker Institute of Public Policy, a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a fellow in the National Committee on United States–China Relations’ Public Intellectuals Program.