Lillith Saylor

Program: Fulbright-Nehru Researcher in Dpt. of Information Technology and Society

Supervisor: Dr. Janaki Srinivasan

Education and Work Experience:

  • Bachelor of Arts Degrees in Economics, Political Science, and International Relations from Goucher College, Baltimore, USA
  • Market Development Analyst at BioSolution Designs, Frederick, USA

Research Interests: Lilith’s research project is examining the factors influencing active rural digital engagement by comparing the interests, needs, and values of smallholder family farms in Karnataka to the digital technologies they consume. Bengaluru’s burgeoning fleet of digital agritech startups depend on their ability (and obligation) to engage with smallholders as decision-making consumers, and Lilith hopes to use these startups to reevaluate existing frameworks for encouraging rural digital participation. Separately, she is also interested in discussions on digital privacy and metronormativity.

Bio: Lilith Saylor will be a researcher affiliated with IIIT-Bangalore until June 2024. Before coming to India, Lilith was one of the founding team members of the biotechnology start-up BioSolution Designs, and will return to her role as a Market Development Analyst following her research to apply her findings to future projects. She has also written and presented critically on biometric technology and its political and socioeconomic entanglements in her paper, “Suspicion Encoded: Women of Color and Biometric Technology in the United States,” published by California Polytechnic State University.

Email: lilith.saylor@iiitb.ac.in

CITAPP at IIIT Bangalore is an interdisciplinary think-tank set-up to focus on the policy challenges and the organizational demands made by technological innovation. Of particular interest to the Centre is how technological advances, along with institutional changes that harness the legitimacy and the powers of bureaucracies and market, address the needs of underserved communities.