Introduction by Jay Bernard
Jay Bernard introduces The Last X Years Podcast with an exploration into the civic role of the poet.
Episode 1: Digital Technologies and Democracy
Caroline Sinders is joined by educator and researcher David Carroll and journalist, artist and filmmaker Kari Paul. They examine how digital technology - from social media to algorithmic targeting - shaped democratic outcomes, reflecting the key concerns of Jay Bernard’s project.
Episode 2: The Politics of Emotion
Caroline Sinders is joined by psychiatrist and clinical research fellow Dr Romy Gad el Rab and independent advisor and strategist Tanya O’Carroll. Together, they explore technologies' impact on political behaviours, attitudes and democracy, delving further into the themes discussed by participants in Jay Bernard's project.
Episode 3: Regulating the Digital Sphere
Caroline Sinders is joined by technology policy analyst Aparna Surendra and writer and activist Jillian C. York. They explore the current effectiveness of technological regulation and what this means for the everyday user, reflecting the invisible forces at play in Jay Bernard's project.
About the speakers
Jay Bernard
Jay Bernard (FRSL) is a writer from London. Their work is interdisciplinary, critical, queer, and rooted in poetry, the voice and social histories. They won the 2018 Ted Hughes Award for Surge: Side A, a cross-disciplinary exploration of the New Cross Fire in 1981, and The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award for the poetry collection that followed.
In 2020 Jay was selected to be a part of Thinking Time, an initiative by Artangel that supported early-career artists to research, reflect, and develop their ideas. Recent work includes Crystals of this Social Substance (Serpentine Pavilion, 2021), You are Invited Back to the Land (Tate Britain, 2023) and Far from the Start (Studio Voltaire, 2024).
David Carroll is a design and technology educator and researcher exploring the intersections of advertising, media, data, surveillance, privacy, platforms, interfaces, democracy, and cultures. Carroll’s legal challenge of the Cambridge Analytica companies under UK data protection law is documented in The Great Hack (Netflix 2019) and Trumping Democracy (Spicee 2018). Since 2023, Carroll has co-directed the Parsons MFA Design & Technology program. He is the recipient of Law and Philosophical Society prizes from Trinity College, Dublin. Carroll is on the board of Check My Ads Institute and administers federate.social in service to the field. He posts as @davidcarroll.org on Bluesky.
Image credit: New School
Dr Romy Gad el Rab is a Psychiatrist, researcher, and artist exploring our intimate entanglements with technology. Working in the NHS’s first centre for Internet Gaming Disorders, she combines clinical insight with interactive installation and performance to question digital addiction and the power structures behind networked systems. Her work has featured in programming at Tate Britain, Somerset House, and Delfina Foundation, where she was a UK Associate for their 2025 thematic season, science_technology_society. A published academic and curator, she creates spaces where science, technology, and art meet through conversation, research, and making.
Tanya O’Carroll is an independent advisor, strategist and leader focused on tech accountability, human rights and social justice. She is a Senior Fellow at Foxglove and works as a consultant for a wide range of NGOs and philanthropic organisations. She is a Strategic Advisor to the Meliore Foundation, where she is helping to catalyze a portfolio of new strategic initiatives focused on making technology work for people and the planet. She previously co-founded and led Amnesty Tech and ‘People vs Big Tech’.
Kari Paul is a journalist, artist, and filmmaker based in Paris, France whose work explores memory and the archive through the lens of social media, materializing digital ephemera through textile practices. Drawing on a career covering platform power and digital culture for outlets including The Guardian, BBC, and VICE her work examines surveillance capitalism and personal data vulnerability. She is currently completing her MFA in Transdisciplinary New Media at Paris College of Art.
Caroline Sinders is an award winning critical designer, researcher, and artist. They’re the co-founder and executive director of the human rights research and technology lab, Convocation Research + Design. For over the past decade, they have been examining the intersections of human rights, artificial intelligence, intersectional justice, harmful design, and systems in technology and digital platforms. They’ve worked with the Tate Exchange at the Tate Modern, the United Nations, the UK’s Information Commissioner's Office, the European Commission, Ars Electronica, the Harvard Kennedy School and others. Caroline is currently based between London, UK and New Orleans, USA.
Image credit: Sarah Wang
Aparna Surendra is a technology policy analyst at AWO Agency, a law firm and consultancy that empowers individuals and organisations to uphold data rights, comply with the law and effect change in data protection and digital policy. Surendra leads AWO’s algorithm governance workstream and oversees research projects focused on emerging technologies, including AI. She has served on the Program Committee for the ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency and is a member of RealML, a collaborative expert workshop investigating the social impacts of algorithmic systems. Alongside technology policy, Aparna writes fiction. She is currently in residence at Somerset House Studios, and has previously held residencies at Tin House and the London Library.
Jillian C. York is a writer and activist whose work examines the impact of technology on our societal and cultural values. Based in Berlin, she is the Director for International Freedom of Expression at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a fellow at the Center for Internet & Human Rights at the European University Viadrina, a visiting professor at the College of Europe Natolin, and the author of Silicon Values: The Future of Free Speech Under Surveillance Capitalism (Verso 2021).
About The Last X Years
The Last X Years is a digital project by artist and poet Jay Bernard, where participants shared a range of perspectives and reflected on how they and the country changed during this turbulent time. These conversations sit at the heart of the project and are presented in a familiar broadcast format. Visit the artwork here, or find out more about The Last X Years here.
