Ifeoma Yvonne Ajunwa (born 26 October 1980) is a Nigerian-American writer, AI Ethics legal scholar, sociologist, and tenured professor of law at the University of North Carolina School Of Law in the United States. She is currently a Visiting Fellow at Yale Law School's Information Society Project (ISP) and she has been a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard Law School since 2017. From 2021–2022, she was a Fulbright Scholar to Nigeria where she studied the role of law for tech start-ups. At UNC Law, she is the Founding Director of the AI Decision-Making Research (AI-DR) Program at UNC Law where she designed and created the first ever clearinghouse for scholarship and research on AI and the Law. She was previously an assistant professor of labor and employment law at Cornell University from 2017–2020, earning tenure there in 2020.
Education
Ajunwa received her BA at University of California, Davis in 2003, her JD at University of San Francisco School of Law in 2007, and her MPhil and PhD in Sociology at Columbia University in 2012 and 2017, respectively. She also completed a Fellowship at Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center from 2016–2017. Ajunwa was a McNair Scholar as an undergraduate student, received an AAUW Selected Professions Fellowship in law school, and was a Paul F. Lazersfeld Fellow as a PhD student. Ajunwa's PhD thesis was advised by Josh Whitford.
Career
Ajunwa is a prolific writer, legal scholar, AI ethics researcher, and tenured professor of law. She is currently Associate Professor of Law (with tenure) at the University of North Carolina School of Law where she is also the Founding Director of the AI Decision-Making Research (AI-DR) Program. Prior to that, Ajunwa was an Assistant professor at the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations and an associate faculty member at Cornell Law School. She is a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, where previously she served as a Fellow from 2016–2017 and as a Teaching Fellow at Harvard Law School,. Ajunwa was awarded tenure by Cornell University on May 22, 2020.
Ajunwa's research interests are at the intersection of law and technology with a particular focus on the ethical governance of workplace technologies, race and tech, AI and Discrimination (especially in the region of Africa), corporate governance, DEI, health equity and privacy. Her research focus is also on diversity and inclusion in the labor market and the workplace. She will publish a book – "The Quantified Worker" – with Cambridge University Press in May 2023.
Ajunwa is an active keynote speaker, board member, advisor, and expert on AI and Ethics issues. She has testified before Congress and several governmental agencies. On January 20, 2023, she testified before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) Meeting of January 31, 2023 – Navigating Employment Discrimination in AI and Automated Systems. On February 5, 2020, Ajunwa testified at a U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and Labor hearing on "The Future of Work: Protecting Workers' Civil Rights in the Digital Age". She discussed artificial intelligence-enabled racial bias in hiring practices and advocated for legislation protecting personal and genetic data privacy in the workplace. On May 6, 2018, Ajunwa was a TEDx Speaker at Cornell University where she presented a talk on the Controversies of Ethics and Technology in the Modern Workplace. At Cornell, Ajunwa has served as a board member on several advisory boards, including for the Institute for Africa Development and the Cornell Prison Education Program (CPEP). She is a founding board member of the Labor Tech Research Network and has served as advisory board member or consultant for several Fortune 500 tech companies.
Awards and honors
2022 – 2023: Visiting Fellow, Yale Law School's Information Society Project
2021–2022: Fulbright Scholar (host country: Nigeria) 2020: Faculty Champion Award, Cornell University 2019: NSF CAREER Award 2018–2019: Keeton House Fellow, Cornell University 2018: Derrick A. Bell Award from the Association of American Law Schools 2016–2017: Fellow, Berkman Klein Center at Harvard University 2010–2015: Paul F. Lazersfeld Fellow, Columbia University 1999–2003: McNair Scholar, UC Davis
Selected works
Ajunwa's scholarly writing includes:
For Law review:
