Amanda Starling Gould, PhD, manages a portfolio on the Partnership for Public Service‘s Technology and Innovation Research team with an eye toward building a modern government that is equitable, accessible, and environmentally sustainable. She currently leads the organization’s enterprise-wide $20M Responsible AI Initiative.

As a technology scholar, she brings to this work many years researching and teaching on topics related to systems thinking, futures design, public interest technology, innovation, and human(e)-centered equity-oriented solutions.

She has a particular interest in the environmental effects of digital technologies and questions the ways technologies of connection can cause disconnect, bias, and harm. She thinks, for example, about how our technologies design us, and about how the unequal distribution of power and access are designed into the system. (More on Research) In her current appointment with Duke’s Graduate Liberal Studies program, she seeks to enable students to interrogate these issues and pursue critical interdisciplinary research projects of their own.

She teaches undergraduate, graduate, and adult learners on topics related to critical digital studies, public and digital humanities, designing equitable futures, and for many years taught a class called Learning to Fail for the Innovation & Entrepreneurship department at Duke.

Prior to the Partnership, she co-directed Duke’s Story+ Research program, where she worked with hundreds of researchers within the academy, in the community, and beyond to develop projects, manage research teams, create communities of practice, and translate their knowledge into stories for public audiences. She was also the Program Director for Educational Programs and Digital Humanities at the Duke John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute where she designed digital learning experiences, consulted on projects, and supported the integration of critical digital thinking across the disciplines.