Jennifer Cearns

I am a digital anthropologist, specialising in AI and algorithms in social life. My research focuses on how people relate to one another through emerging intelligent technologies, exploring the ideological and cultural underpinnings of these new formulations of the self, personhood and kinship. 

I completed my PhD in Anthropology at UCL in 2020, with a thesis examining material and digital exchange between socialism and capitalism in Cuba and across Central and North America, with a focus on the kinship ties that underpin informal economies.

To date, I have conducted ethnographic research in Brazil, Cuba, the US, Guyana, Panama, Mexico, Spain, and the UK.

Prior to my position at Manchester, I was a Lecturer in Digital Anthropology at UCL, an Associate Postdoctoral Fellow at the Alan Turing Institute, and Leach Fellow in Public Anthropology at the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain & Ireland.

I was previously a Finalist of the BBC New Generation Thinker Award, and have spoken on radio, television and at festivals about digital culture. in 2026, I was invited to give a TED talk, called 'How AI makes us more human'. 

I have also worked in the technology industry as a UX consultant for over a decade, influencing the design of technologies where they're built. I have worked across numerous UK government departments and the NHS, as well as for companies like Airbnb, Wise, and eBay. 

Alongside my academic career, I continue to work extensively as an opera singer across the UK and Europe. 

I am currently conducting research into Human-AI relations, looking at intimacy and how trust and empathy forms between humans and AIs. My research considers romantic relationships with AI, grief and bereavement, AI and memory aids for those living with dementia, the epistemology of AI, and the role of AI in embryo selection. I am a member of the 'Doing AI Differently' Initiative, coordinated by the Alan Turing Institute. 

I am also currently writing about the use of AI in religious imagery (such as Orthodox icons), as well as its growing role in shaping cultural memory and historiography. 

In addition to this, I am working on a methodological paper considering AI chatbots as research interlocutors, and how this challenges current ethnographic methods. 

My first monograph — Circulating Culture — was published in 2023 by University Press of Florida, and was nominated for the Association of Latina and Latino Anthropologists First Book Prize and the Society for Latin American & Caribbean Anthropology Book Prize by the American Anthropological Association. The book examines how, despite decades of diplomatic hostilities and economic sanctions, the border between Cuba and the United States—arguably one of the most politicized in the world—is in a state of constant flux. Tracing the flows of people, material items, and digital content between Havana and Miami, as well as between Cuba and Panama, Guyana, and Mexico, I explore how and why these circuits are a part of everyday life for millions of Cubans who negotiate extraordinary circumstances daily.

Since 2023 I have been a Visiting Professor at KU Leuven in Belgium, where I am collaborating with scholars looking at privatisation of social housing across the Global South.

As part of this research project, I have been considering the emerging role of the private sector within socialist housing structures on the island, and conducted new ethnographic fieldwork there in 2024 and 2025. I am currently completing a book project about a broader perceived shift in values (both economic and moral) in Cuba.

At the University of Manchester I am a core member of the new AI research cluster, which is part of the Centre for Digital Trust & Society.

I am a Visiting Professor at KU Leuven, and am affiliated with a research project looking at financialization of housing across the Global South, including in Havana, Cuba.

I am an Honorary Fellow at the Centre for Digital Anthropology at UCL, and am part of the Alan Turing Institute's Doing AI Differently research programme. 

I currently teach 'The Human & The Digital' and 'Images, Text, Fieldwork'. Most of my teaching focuses on digital platforms and economy, digital methods, ethics, and the production of knowledge in the digital realm. I am also affiliated with the Critical AI programme at Rutgers University (New Jersey), which focuses on developing critically-engaged teaching methodologies for AI. 

I am interested in supervising students working on the following themes:

• Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, technology and (self) surveillance / tracking, digital technology and intimacy
• kinship, personhood, relation to self and other
• Cuba, (urban) Latin America, (post)socialism, migration and/or diaspora
• exchange, value, anthropology of capitalism/ socialism, informal economy

Current PhD Students:

• Yuqin Zhang — 'Dreaming Girls: how AI change the intimacy and identity construction of young women in China'