Digital Technologies and Sustainable Development Workshop

Oxford, United Kingdom, 30 September- 1 October 2024

 

Under the umbrella of the IUSSP Digital and Computational Demography Panel, the Digital Gender Gaps team at the University of Oxford was thrilled to host a two-day workshop on 30 September and 1 October 2024 on the theme of ‘Digital Technologies and Sustainable Development’.

 

The workshop was held at Nuffield College, Oxford, and featured a lineup of interdisciplinary researchers from academic institutions—including UC Berkeley, Bielefeld University, Carnegie Mellon University Africa, University of Oxford, Johns Hopkins University, Boston University, Rutgers University, University of Toronto, Lahore University of Management Sciences, University of Washington, University of Cape Town, William & Mary, SUPSI, and Saarland University—and organizations such as ICT Africa, Meta, GSMA, BBC Media Action, UNFPA, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.


The workshop provided a space for insightful presentations and discussions on the intersection of digital technology, gender inequality, and sustainable development. Across seven thematic sessions, researchers delivered 30 presentations on topics such as measuring digital expansion and inequality, the role of digital technology in women’s empowerment, financial and economic inclusion in the digital revolution, the use of digital trace data in social and demographic research, and the broader population impacts of digital technologies.

 

 

Presentations covered different types of digital technologies such as mobile phones, internet technologies, social media and platforms, apps, and generative AI and their impacts. The role of digital technologies in fostering new types of data for social and demographic measurement, including web, social media and geospatial data was also a central theme. Outside of formal research presentations, conference participants discussed shared overlapping research and policy interests, common methodological challenges, and areas for future collaboration. 


The workshop highlighted the value of diverse methodological approaches—quantitative and computational, qualitative, ethnographic, and mixed-method—to address complex questions about digital technology’s impact on populations. It concluded with a wide-ranging discussion emphasizing the importance of careful measurement and data collection, qualitative insights, and collaboration between academics, practitioners, and policymakers to understand and the role of digital technology in shaping global sustainable development dynamics and social inequalities.

 

The Digital Gender Gaps Team is grateful for funding for the workshop from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (INV-045370) and Nuffield College Academic Fund. We plan to host this workshop again in Fall 2025.