Welcome Jeni and Diarmaid!

by Chris McGivern & SF Team, 1 March 2022

Congratulations and welcome to Jeni Tennison and Diarmaid McDonald - the new Shuttleworth Fellows for March 2022!

We are thrilled to welcome our new intake to the Fellowship community and would like to offer our gratitude to Nicole Wong, our Honorary Steward for the 2022 round, for her thoughtful guidance and input throughout a selection process that included a compelling shortlist of candidates.

Nicole works at the intersection of law, emerging technologies, and public policy. She is a powerful voice for human rights and justice, and an advocate for freedom of expression and digital democracy. Her knowledge and experience of designing and supporting systems at every level makes her an ideal Honorary Steward in these challenging times.

The pandemic has been tragic and disastrous. It has also shone a light on the deep-rooted issues in our global systems and their failure to produce widespread, collective gains. We need to fix or replace them, and quickly: many people feel a lack of control and sense the unfairness. They are disengaging - or, in some cases, uprising - as they realise the systems and structures are not working. As we emerge from the pandemic, there has never been a better time to embrace new approaches and build new, sustainable and equitable systems.

Nicole has selected two new Shuttleworth Fellows who are engaging and activating people around new ideas and alternative systems and structures. Jeni is working on a new approach to data governance while Diarmaid’s focus is access to medicines. While they are in very different fields, both new Fellows share the significant challenge of shifting thinking against a deep-rooted consensus and powerful, dominant narratives.

Jeni is bringing open values to the field of data governance. She is encouraging us to move away from the narratives of privacy as a pre-eminent human right and personal data as personal property. Her Idea is ‘Connected by data’ - an open, participatory model of data governance that puts community at the centre of decisions about data. Read more

Diarmaid is scaling Just Treatment, a patient-led campaign group fighting for access to high-quality healthcare. He is exposing the myth of innovation that’s created and maintained by the political influence of big pharma, big data, and healthcare corporations, and exploring a more open and socially just model of healthcare. Read more

We are incredibly excited to welcome Jeni and Diarmaid to the Shuttleworth Fellowship. This is important work with the potential to lay the foundations for a better future as we emerge from the pandemic. We look forward to exploring their ideas and learning from them as much as they learn from the wider Fellowship community.

Thank you Nicole, and welcome Jeni and Diarmaid!