Dr Harriet Deacon

Biography	Harriet Deacon has had research experience in a range of different fields, including intellectual property law, medical history, stigma and discrimination, tangible and intangible heritage. She has worked at a museum, an archives advocacy NGO and as a policy consultant and researcher. She was involved in several research projects exploring the role of intangible heritage in sustainable development in India and Kyrgyzstan (hipams.org) and northern Europe (LIVIND). Since 2010, she has been a consultant to UNESCO under the 2003 Intangible Heritage Convention, working on major projects including global capacity building, periodic reporting and economic aspects of heritage safeguarding. She has also consulted to WIPO’s Traditional Knowledge Division, including on the Training, Mentoring and Matchmaking Program on Intellectual Property for Women Entrepreneurs from Local Communities 2022-2023. She has a BA (Hons) from the University of Cape Town (1989), a PhD in History (Cambridge, 1994) and a MSc in Management of Intellectual Property (QMUL, 2016). She is interested in the impact and use of AI (and associated intellectual property / data governance considerations) in the creative industries and intangible cultural heritage. She has been involved in an ongoing project about the economics of living heritage safeguarding with UNESCO. She is Principal Investigator on the British-Academy funded DAIL-ICH Project on digital/AI literacy for community data governance in Africa. She organised a roundtable on ICH inventorying, Intellectual Property and Artificial Intelligence in the UK in June 2024 and was a coordinator of a UNESCO Webinar on Artificial Intelligence and Intangible Cultural Heritage in October 2024. She is an associate member of the APPG on Craft in the UK Parliament.
Research Interests	AI ethics Heritage studies History of science and medicine Intellectual Property law

Biography

Harriet Deacon has had research experience in a range of different fields, including intellectual property law, medical history, stigma and discrimination, tangible and intangible heritage. She has worked at a museum, an archives advocacy NGO and as a policy consultant and researcher. She was involved in several research projects exploring the role of intangible heritage in sustainable development in India and Kyrgyzstan (hipams.org) and northern Europe (LIVIND). Since 2010, she has been a consultant to UNESCO under the 2003 Intangible Heritage Convention, working on major projects including global capacity building, periodic reporting and economic aspects of heritage safeguarding. She has also consulted to WIPO’s Traditional Knowledge Division, including on the Training, Mentoring and Matchmaking Program on Intellectual Property for Women Entrepreneurs from Local Communities 2022-2023. She has a BA (Hons) from the University of Cape Town (1989), a PhD in History (Cambridge, 1994) and a MSc in Management of Intellectual Property (QMUL, 2016).

She is interested in the impact and use of AI (and associated intellectual property / data governance considerations) in the creative industries and intangible cultural heritage. She has been involved in an ongoing project about the economics of living heritage safeguarding with UNESCO. She is Principal Investigator on the British-Academy funded DAIL-ICH Project on digital/AI literacy for community data governance in Africa. She organised a roundtable on ICH inventorying, Intellectual Property and Artificial Intelligence in the UK in June 2024 and was a coordinator of a UNESCO Webinar on Artificial Intelligence and Intangible Cultural Heritage in October 2024. She is an associate member of the APPG on Craft in the UK Parliament.

Research Interests

AI ethics
Heritage studies
History of science and medicine
Intellectual Property law