The Fresno State Library’s 2026 Womack Lecture will feature award-winning legal scholar Dr. Ifeoma Ajunwa for a talk titled “The Quantified Worker” from 6 to 7 p.m. Tuesday, April 21, at the Leon S. Peters Ellipse Gallery in the Fresno State Library. The event will explore how the rapid development of artificial intelligence technologies is transforming the modern workplace. The lecture is open to the public and free of charge.
In her book, also titled “The Quantified Worker,” published by Cambridge University Press in 2023, Ajunwa examines the growing reliance on automated systems to recruit, screen, evaluate, schedule, monitor, discipline and terminate workers. She argues that these technologies have shifted workplace power from human managers to data-driven and algorithmic systems, reshaping the structure of employment. Ajunwa will discuss what workers need to understand about these technological changes and how they can continue to thrive in the age of AI.
Ajunwa is the Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Law at Emory Law School, where she serves as associate dean of projects and partnerships and founding director of the AI and the Future of Work Program. She is also the AI.Humanity Professor of Law and Ethics, a faculty associate at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, a senior corresponding fellow at Yale Law School’s Center for Private Law and a Fulbright Fellow for 2021-22.
The Womack Lecture is sponsored by the J. Prentice Womack Fund, established by the late Rhoda Womack in honor of her husband, who was a librarian at Fresno State from 1958 to 1970. The annual Womack Lecture series is focused on issues of a bibliographic nature or on social concerns, as stipulated by the family’s bequest to the Fresno State Library.
For information or special accommodations, call 559.278.2403.
