Hi there, I'm Seán – a PhD candidate based in Dublin.
I got my BA in linguistics and computer science in 2017. I then completed an MPhil in speech and language processing (2020), while balancing full-time work at various Irish startups, generally in the AI and chatbots space (2017—2021).
In October 2021 I began my interdisciplinary PhD in fair search systems.
My research interest focuses on intersectional fairness. I want to address the ways in which real-world discrimination can filter into the search and recommendations systems that we engage with each day.
I draw heavily upon my varied training as a knowledge representation researcher, a privacy researcher, and a linguist.
Dissatisfied with the definitions of identity and power currently used widely in the field of fair search and recommendation, my research aims to achieve a more realistic model of power and fairness, closer to the intuitive meaning of justice, while remaining grounded in tractable real-world applications.
I try to read both in the social sciences and fair IR research, in order to build on the state-of-the-art with insights from social identity theory, amortized and group fairness research, and general IR methodologies. .