AI and civil society organizing

Generative AI and Civil Society Organizing - Threats and Opportunities in Organizations and Contexts

In this workshop, academics and practitioners explore the role of generative AI in civil society organizing, analyzing its challenges and opportunities for grassroots communities and organizations in different political systems, ranging from liberal democracies to authoritarian regimes. Today, a flurry of reports from leading corporations create both hype and fear around the potential implications of generative AI. At the same time, contemporary practitioner-oriented reports focused on civil society organizing try to provide guidance in a fast-developing field, addressing the need for a responsible and accountable AI in grassroots communities and organizations.

By bringing together scholars from various disciplines working on generative AI and enabling them to convene with engaged practitioners in the field, the workshop generates a starting point for more comprehensive and much-needed research on generative AI and civil society organizing. It will do so by addressing implications of AI at individual, organizational, and field levels, as well as considering the implications of generative AI in the broader geopolitical contexts in which it is used. 

Organisers: Alice Mattoni, Julie Uldam, Noomi Weinryb
Expert input: Tactical Tech, Connected by Data, Cooperative Impact Lab, session chair: Noomi Weinryb
Academic speakers: Oana Albu, Elanor Colleoni, Michael Etter, Alice Mattoni, Sandra Smeltzer, Julie Uldam

Date and time: Friday July 25, 2025, 3PM-5:30PM (CET)
Venue: Academy of Management annual meeting, Bella Center, Copenhagen
Further information about the workshop: Julie Uldam, ju.msc@cbs.dk

Expert input:

Oluwakemi Oso, Cooperative Impact Lab
Oluwakemi Oso, Chief Program Officer at Higher Ground Institute, works at the intersection of technology, data, and social justice. Blending technical expertise with organizer training, she translates complex tech into actionable insights. Since 2015, she’s led innovative programs like the 2023 generative AI cohort and trained thousands of organizers. HGI advances progressive organizing by connecting technologists and practitioners to scale impactful innovations across movements.

Nick Scott, The Centre for Responsible Union AI
Nick leads The Centre for Responsible Union AI, a project by Unions 21 which seeks to: build AI understanding and skills in unions; and support them in engaging with AI in a strategic, responsible and effective way. Nick brings many years experience as a senior digital leader at non-profit, trade union and research organisations including Unison, Médicins Sans Frontières, Oxfam, ODI Global, Greenpeace and more and more.

Marek Tuszynski, Tactical Tech
Tactical Tech is a creative international non-profit with over two decades of experience dedicated to exploring the socio-political and environmental impacts of technology on society. We work to empower individuals and communities to navigate and mitigate the ways digital technologies change their lives and transform societies. We develop creative interventions, resources, and tools —such as exhibitions, kits, guides and training programs — that spark conversations and drive transformative action. 
Marek Tuszynski, Executive Director and co-founder of Tactical Tech, is an artist, designer, curator, filmmaker, producer, teacher and provocateur. For 30 years, he has worked at the intersection of technology and politics, information and activism, and the consequences of living in a quantified society. In 2023, Marek was recognised by Mozilla Rise25 Awards as one of the visionary leaders actively shaping a more ethical, responsible, and inclusive future for the internet.

Academic speakers: 

Oana Albu
Oana Albu is an Associate Professor at Copenhagen Business School and a Nordic Fellow at the Swedish Institute for Advanced Studies. Her research focuses on emerging technologies and civil society organising with a focus on difficult, dangerous and vulnerable contexts. Her research collaborations include small and large NGOs and civil society movements across the Middle East and North Africa to Africa region.

Elanor Colleoni
Elanor Colleoni is Senior Assistant Professor at IULM University in Milan, Italy. Her research focuses on non-market strategies and audiences’ judgment-formation processes over socially (ir)-responsible organizational actions, with a focus on new digital technologies. She has published several academic articles in leading management journals, such as Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Perspectives, Business & Society, among others.

Michael Etter
Michael Etter is an Associate Professor/Reader in Entrepreneurship and Digitalization at King's Business School. He is interested in digital organizing and the construction of social evaluation of new and established firms, such as organizational reputation and legitimacy, in the new media landscape, which is shaped by new information and communication technologies (ICT).

Sandra Smeltzer, Western University, Canada
Dr. Smeltzer's current areas of research and publication include critical pedagogy, experiential learning, community engaged learning, the ethics of activist research, ICTs for social justice, and the scholar-activist dialectic. She holds a SSHRC Insight Grant on experiential learning; is a Teaching Fellow at Western, with a focus on community engaged learning (2015-2020); a Moore Institute Fellow at the National University of Ireland, Galway (2016); and the co-coordinator of the Media and the Public Interest program at Western. She has been awarded the USC Teaching Honour Roll Award of Excellence for every year she has taught at the university, and is a two-time recipient of the Undergraduate Teaching Award. She was awarded Western's inaugural Humanitarian Award for her international work, named one of Canada's Top 25 Most Influential Women by Women of Influence magazine and one of Western's Top Newsmakers, and is profiled in the philanthropy magazine, Lifestyles. 

A note on the organizers

Alice Mattoni is Associate Professor in the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the University of Bologna. Her research focuses on intersections between digital technologies and social movements, civil society organizations and movement organizations. Mattoni is coordinating editor of Social Movement Studies and Partecipazione e Conflitto, editorial board member of Social Media + Society, and co-founder and current editor of the Routledge Series Media and Communication Activism.

Julie Uldam is Associate Professor at the Department of Management, Communication and Society, Copenhagen Business School. Her research explores the role of digital media technologies in societal challenges, including social movements and the climate crisis, and volunteer organizing. Her research is published in journals such as International Journal of Communication, Journal of Business Ethics, and Management Communication Quarterly.

Noomi Weinryb is Associate Professor in Business Studies with a focus on Organization Theory at Södertörn University, Stockholm. With a background in organizational institutionalism, and her research is centered on issues of civil society organizing at large, especially focused on social media and transnational support for democracy and human rights in authoritarian settings. Her work appears for example in Nonprofit Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Organization, and Public Management Review.