Shareena Howley

My research focuses on the intersections of artificial intelligence, data-intensive systems, and Indigenous epistemologies, with a particular emphasis on Māori communities. I investigate how AI and data infrastructures can be reconfigured to support community thriving, rather than reproducing epistemic injustice and structural harm.

Current work examines:

• Epistemic injustice in AI and data-intensive systems, including how Māori knowledge-holders experience misrecognition, silencing, and misinterpretation in data and algorithmic projects.
• The mismatch between relational, community-based epistemologies and dominant Western data architectures, and the possibilities for alternative, relational representational logics.
• The ethical and epistemic significance of absence, refusal, nulls and outliers in data relating to Indigenous communities.
• Authority, expertise and meaningful involvement of Māori communities across the AI/data lifecycle, including governance and decision-making arrangements.
• The role of language and linguistic relativity in shaping AI’s conceptual frame, and the implications of English-dominant models for concepts expressed in te reo Māori.

Methodologically, my work is grounded in participatory and community-engaged approaches. I come to this research as someone outside the communities I work with, and I seek to proceed humbly, treating literature-derived themes as starting points to be refined, challenged and reconfigured by Māori knowledge-holders. My broader background in critical data studies, decolonial theory and socio-technical analysis informs a commitment to designing AI and data practices that respect Indigenous data sovereignty, relational epistemologies and diverse value systems.