What We Do
Brinda Dalal
Research Director, Technology Horizons
With a background in social anthropology, Brinda has lived and worked on three continents. As a research director for the Technology Horizons program, she identifies emerging technology hotspots and helps organizations around the world understand and design for change. Her relationship with IFTF began in the early 2000s when she participated on IFTF panels on ethnographic expertise in the corporate sector and on microcredit and collective action for citizen groups in low-resource settings. She worked with the Health Horizons program in 2011 and 2012 and then joined the Technology Horizons core team to help promote the 2013 research agenda. She also serves as president of Dhoopa Ventures LLC, providing consulting on innovation and research strategy in high-tech and emerging markets.
At IFTF, Brinda has led and participated in projects ranging from the future of consumption, mobility, and well-being to planetary monitoring, poverty alleviation, and access to clean drinking water. Her current research focuses on how people will integrate ensembles of networked objects and devices into their lives, and how individuals might use technology to share subjective experiences with each other. Before she joined IFTF, Brinda cofounded the Clean Technology Initiative at Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) and helped to build a strong ethnographic competency at Xerox Global Services. Brinda holds a BA in anthropology and sociology, with honors, from St. Xavier’s College in Bombay, India, and obtained an MPhil and a PhD in social anthropology from the University of Cambridge.
Read Brinda's recent interview on the Internet of Things relevant to our Technology Horizons 2013 research.