A practice in dialogue, knowledge, and design.

Satinder P. Gill is a researcher and editor working at the intersection of human cognition, technology, and the arts. Her work examines how tacit knowledge emerges in dialogue, i.e. tacit engagement, and how that understanding provides a critical lens on the changing nature of presence in the digital age.

She is Managing Editor of the AI & SocietyJournal and curator and co-chair of Cambridge L.A.S.E.R., which convenes ongoing conversations between artists, scientists, and the public.

Her book Tacit Engagement proposes a framework for understanding how meaning is co-created in the embodied, rhythmic flow of human interaction — and what this means for the systems we build.

Since her PhD on dialogue and tacit knowledge, Satinder's research has been motivated by three related concerns: first, how do I know that I have been understood and that I have understood?; second, on certainty — why, when we engage with the artificial representation of "knowledge", do we lose our capacity to judge with doubt?; and third, with the rapid pace of change of technology and its uptake, can the arts and sciences together create new methodologies that bring the ephemeral experience and the representational together to grasp and research the impacts in society, and shape interfaces that afford tacit engagement?

Following a PhD (Cantab) in Experimental Psychology (Darwin College, 1995) on Dialogue and Tacit Knowledge for Knowledge Transfer, Satinder has held research posts in different countries: with NTT Basic Research Labs and ATR Media Lab in Japan, at CKIR (Centre for Knowledge and Innovation Research) in Finland, CSLI at Stanford University in the USA, Middlesex University in London, and the Centre for Music and Science at the University of Cambridge.