Technology for the public interest: preventing capture and promoting welfare
Hosted by the Department of International Development
In-person and online public event (LSE campus, venue tbc ticketholders)
Monday 20 Oct 2025 6.30pm - 8pm
In this lecture, Padmashree Gehl Sampath compares the trajectories of two critical technology-driven sectors, pharmaceuticals and artificial intelligence, to show how weak policy and regulatory oversight can lead to technology capture and reduce the public interest benefits from technological innovation.
Gehl Sampath will propose ways to arrive at new common – regional and global - approaches to promote technology for the public interest.
Meet our speakers and chair
Padmashree Gehl Sampath is currently the Chief Executive Officer of the African Pharmaceutical Technology Foundation, a new regional Agency in Africa dedicated to support technology transitions in African countries to enable the growth of the pharmaceutical sector. She is also the Senior Advisor to the President of the African Development Bank on Pharmaceuticals and Health, a Visiting Professor in Practice at LSE and Honorary Professor at the University of Rwanda in Kigali, Rwanda and Professorial Fellow, United Nations University-MERIT.
Laura Mann is a sociologist at LSE whose research focuses on the political economy of development, knowledge and technology. Her regional focus is East Africa (Sudan, Kenya and Rwanda) but she has also worked on collaborative research on ICTs and BPO in Asia and has conducted fieldwork in North America as part of a project on digitisation within global agriculture.
Ken Shadlen is Professor of Development Studies in the Department of International Development at LSE. Ken works on the comparative and international political economy of development, with a focus on understanding variation in national policy responses to changing global rules.
More about this event
The Department of International Development (@LSE_ID) promotes interdisciplinary postgraduate teaching and research on processes of social, political and economic development and change.
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