Youmna Hashem

Youmna Hashem is a senior analyst at RAND Europe, working in the Science and Emerging Technology team. With international expertise working with a range of organisations and partners, across academia, industry, and government on the responsible adoption of artificial intelligence and other emergent technologies, Hashem aims to embed a variety of voices and perspectives into her research, championing robust, context-specific approaches to the interrogation and adoption of data-driven technologies. Her research interests concert at the intersection between public policy, ethics and responsible innovation, public engagement, and human-centred digital innovation. 

Prior to joining RAND Europe, Hashem was a researcher at The Alan Turing Institute, where she worked directly with public sector bodies to explore critical questions around the use of digital technologies in the frontline of service delivery. Through mixed-methods research, her work focused on developing empirical tools and conceptual frameworks for the ethical and responsible adoption of emergent technologies in the public sector. Prior to this, Hashem also worked as a researcher at Egyptian data science and AI company Synapse Analytics, where her work concentrated on efforts to develop an accessible and localised knowledge base on AI and digital technology in the Middle East and North Africa region. She holds an M.Sc. in digital sociology from the University of Edinburgh, where her research focused on the implications of data-intensive tracking technologies on citizen privacy during the pandemic.