Principal
Dr. Kara Kennedy is an independent scholar, author, and educator in the areas of digital and AI literacy, technology, and science fiction. She has presented on digital and AI literacy at conferences in the US, Australia, and New Zealand. Her articles on digital and information literacy, as well as the gender gap in Wikipedia, have been published in Digital Humanities Quarterly, Asia Pacific Journal of Education, Women’s Studies Journal, and She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation. She is also the author of three books and several articles on science fiction literature and visual media, specializing in the study of Frank Herbert’s epic Dune series, which she has discussed in interviews in Variety, Esquire, Vulture, Inverse, and Stuff NZ. (A list of publications is available on LinkedIn or ResearchGate.)
Dr. Kennedy has been engaged in the world of tech and digital skills since she began designing and managing websites in the early days of the internet. Her various roles across higher education, industry, and non-profit sectors in the US and New Zealand have given her valuable insights into people’s struggles with technology and digital transformation projects. She sees a continuing need for digital and AI literacy and skill-building across all levels of society, particularly in the age of generative AI. After seeing the growing demand for guidance and resources in this space, she created the popular AI Literacy Framework in 2023 based off of UNESCO’s Digital Literacy Global Framework. She plans to continue developing this work and curating other resources with collaborators under the umbrella of the AI Literacy Institute.