Ifeoma Ajunwa

Ifeoma Yvonne Ajunwa (born 26 October 1980) is a Nigerian-American writer, AI Ethics legal scholar, sociologist, and Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Law at Emory Law School.

Ajunwa received her BA at University of California, Davis in 2003, her JD at University of San Francisco School of Law in 2007, and her MPhil and PhD in Sociology at Columbia University in 2012 and 2017, respectively.

She also completed a Fellowship at Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center from 2016–2017.

Ajunwa was a McNair Scholar as an undergraduate student, received an AAUW Selected Professions Fellowship in law school, and was a Paul F. Lazersfeld Fellow as a PhD student.

Ajunwa's PhD thesis was advised by Josh Whitford.

Ajunwa is a prolific writer, legal scholar, AI ethics researcher, and tenured professor of law.

She is currently Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Law at Emory Law School.

Prior to that, Ajunwa was an Assistant professor at the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations and an associate faculty member at Cornell Law School.

She is a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, where previously she served as a Fellow from 2016–2017 and as a Teaching Fellow at Harvard Law School,.

She is currently a Resident Fellow at Yale Law School's Information Society Project (ISP) and she has been a Faculty Associate at the Berkman Klein Center at Harvard Law School since 2017.

From 2021–2022, she was a Fulbright Scholar to Nigeria where she studied the role of law for tech start-ups.

She was previously an assistant professor of labor and employment law at Cornell University from 2017–2020, earning tenure there in 2020.

On May 6, 2018, Ajunwa was a TEDx Speaker at Cornell University where she presented a talk on the Controversies of Ethics and Technology in the Modern Workplace.

At Cornell, Ajunwa has served as a board member on several advisory boards, including for the Institute for Africa Development and the Cornell Prison Education Program (CPEP).

She is a founding board member of the Labor Tech Research Network and has served as advisory board member or consultant for several Fortune 500 tech companies.

Ajunwa's scholarly writing includes:

For Law review:

For Peer Review and Other Publications:

Ajunwa's public media writing includes:

Ajunwa was awarded tenure by Cornell University on May 22, 2020.

Ajunwa's research interests are at the intersection of law and technology with a particular focus on  the ethical governance of workplace technologies, race and tech, AI and Discrimination (especially in the region of Africa), corporate governance, DEI, health equity and privacy.

Her research focus is also on diversity and inclusion in the labor market and the workplace.

Her first book – The Quantified Worker – was published by Cambridge University Press in May 2023.

Ajunwa is an active keynote speaker, board member, advisor, and expert on AI and Ethics issues.

She has testified before Congress and several governmental agencies.

On January 20, 2023, she testified before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) Meeting of January 31, 2023 – Navigating Employment Discrimination in AI and Automated Systems.

On February 5, 2020, Ajunwa testified at a U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and Labor hearing on "The Future of Work: Protecting Workers' Civil Rights in the Digital Age".

She discussed artificial intelligence-enabled racial bias in hiring practices and advocated for legislation protecting personal and genetic data privacy in the workplace.