Research Statement

My interdisciplinary and community-centered research mobilizes Postcolonial, Black and Feminist approaches in the emerging field of Art, Science, and Technology Studies (ASTS)  to investigate sociotechnical systems across three key research pillars and scales: Critical Policy Studies, Arts and Cultural Institutions, and Computational Research-Creation. Following poet, scholar and curator Hannah Star Rogers’ call for the symmetrical application of STS theories and methods to both the cultures of art and science, I investigate the politics and imaginaries behind how different sociotechnical entities are intertwined with each other; how such intertwining shapes the world across policy, technology, and creation; and how to situate ourselves as researchers and practitioners within these relationalities.

Research Areas

  • Doctoral Thesis: Jones, M. (2025). Festivals as Temporary Utopias: Publics, Futures, Transformations. Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture, Concordia University.

    Guest Lecture: Jones, M. (2025, September 25). Festivals as Temporary Utopias: Publics, Futures, Transformations [Guest lecture]. Seminar on Media Workers and AI, Department of Arts, Culture and Media, University of Toronto Scarborough.

    Presentation: Jones, M.(2025). Festivals as Temporary Utopias: Publics, Futures, Transformations [Conference presentation]. The Int. Conference on the Histories of Media Art, Science and Technology: Re:generative, Manizales & Bogotà, Colombia.

    Guest Lecture: Jones, M. (2024, November 26). Festivals as Temporary Utopias: Publics, Futures, Transformations [Guest lecture]. Seminar on Curating Emerging Futures, University of Applied Science and Arts Bielefeld.

    Presentation:Jones, M., Wester, M., and Blottiere, M. (2023, May 16–21). Curation as Research-Creation: Speculating on the Future of Art and Technology Festivals [Conference presentation]. ISEA2023 Symbiosis, Paris, France.

    Book Review:Jones, M. (2023). Book Review: The Earthly Community: Reflections on the Last Utopia. New Media & Society, 1(3).

    Research Paper: Jones, M. (2023). Mind extended: Relational, spatial, and performative ontologies. AI & SOCIETY, 39, 21-28.

  • Draft Report:Jones, M., Blottiere, M., Pasquier, P., Siebert, O., McKelvey, F., Casemajor, N., Mahoas, K., and Baltazar, P. (2025). ArtIA: Building a Commons for AI in Digital Creation [Forthcoming].

    Research Paper: Jones, M., Blottiere, M., McKelvey, F., and Simon B. (2025). ArtIA: Building a New Digital Commons for Creative AI [Abstract accepted].

    Talk: Jones, M., Blottiere, M, & Baltazar, P. (2025, August 19). Towards a Commons for AI in Digital Creation [Talk]. 3rd ArtIA Symposium, Society for Arts and Technology, Montreal, Canada.

  • Research Paper: Jones, M., & McKelvey, F. (2024). Deconstructing public participation in the governance of facial recognition technologies in Canada. AI & SOCIETY.

    Presentation: Jones, M. (2023). Redesigning Public Participation in the Age of Generative AI [Conference presentation]. Shifting AI Controversies Conference, Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society, Berlin, Germany.

    Book Chapter: Jones, M. (2023). AI and Society 5.0: Imaginaries and metaphors in the publicity of Japanese science and technology policy [Manuscript accepted for publication]. Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Society and Culture, Concordia University.

    Presentation: Jones, M., & McKelvey, F. (2023). Public Participation in the Governance of Facial Recognition Technologies in Canada [Conference presentation]. From Inequality to Justice: Law and Ethics of AI & Technology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada.

    Workshop: Wester, M., Marinov, R., Jones, M., & McKelvey, F. (2023). AI + Society 2038. Milieux Institute, Concordia University, Montreal, Canada.

    Op-ed: Linder, T., Jones, M. and McKelvey, F. (2023). Toronto police consultation on AI lacks sufficient public engagement. The Toronto Star.

    Presentation: Jones, M., & Wester, M. (2023, June 19–20). Public Inputs as Training Data: Consultation, Calibration and Machine Learning Political Orders [Conference presentation]. Data Justice Conference 2023, Cardiff University, United Kingdom.

    Consultation: Brandusescu, Ana and Jones, Maurice and Linder, Thomas and McKelvey, Fenwick and McPhail, Brenda and Megelas, Alex and Rismani, Shalaleh and Sengupta, Ushnish and Sieber, Renee, Response to Toronto Police Service's consultation on the draft governance for the acquisition and use of AI technology (December 23, 2022).

    Guest Lecture: Jones, M. (2022, November 15). AI to the People: Reimagining Public Participation in AI Governance [Guest lecture]. GIGA, Keio University SFC, Fujisawa, Japan.

    Presentation: Jones, M. (2022). AI across borders: Experimental methods for cross-cultural research on Artificial Intelligence [Conference presentation]. Hype, Hyper or Overhyped Symposium, Milieux Institute, Concordia University, Montreal.

    Presentation: Jones, M. (2022). Intelligent Machines in a Fluid World: Deconstructing metaphors in Japanese AI policy [Conference presentation]. Japanese-German Conference: Artificial Intelligence and the Human – Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Science and Fiction, Berlin.

    Research Paper: Jones, M. (2022). Towards Civil Strategization of AI in Germany. An investigation of the involvement of civil society in the making of the German National Artificial Intelligence Strategy. HIIG Discussion Paper Series, 2022(1), 21.

    Blog: Jones, M. (2022). Civil Society and AI: Striving for ethical governance.

  • Research Paper: Jones, M., and Saunier, A. (2025). Wilding AI as Collective Research-Creation: Resisting Narrative and Technological Closure [Forthcoming]. Artnodes.

    Conference Paper: Jones, M., Saunier, A., Coleman, B., and Visi, F. (2025). Wilding AI: Prototyping Multi-Agent AI Systems for a Spatial Aesthetics of Sonic Behavior [Under review]. NeurIPS 2025.

    Conference Paper: Saunier, A., Visi, F., and Jones, M.(2025). Large Language Models to generate sonic behaviors: the case of Wilding AI in exploring creative co-agency. The Sixth Conference on AI Music Creativity, Computational Creativity Lab of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium.

    Research Paper: McKelvey, F., Jones, M., Marinov, R., Frizzera, L., and Wester, M. (2025). The Consultation Machine: Experiments in AI Futures, Literacies and Public Participation[Under review]. Imaginations.

    Workshop: Jones, M. (2025, January 23).From Text to Sound: Harnessing LLMs and Multi-Agent Systems for Creative Practice [Workshop]. Wilding AI Lab, CTM Festival, MONOM Studios, Berlin, Germany.

    Presentation:Jones, M. (2024, July 19). From Soundscape Ecology to Sonic Assemblage: Imagining an Earthly Community [Conference Presentation]. 4S-EASST, Free University of Amsterdam, NL.

    Jones, M. (2024, April 5). From Soundscape Ecology to Sonic Assemblage: Imagining an Earthly Community [Conference Presentation]. Aesthetics of Geopower: Imagining Planetary Histories and Hegemonies, University of Amsterdam, NL.