Helena Machado, full professor of Sociology at the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Minho and researcher at the Centre for Research in Anthropology (CRIA), has been awarded an advanced grant of €2.46 million from the European Research Council (ERC) to analyse the global impacts of facial recognition technologies over the next five years. ERC grants are amongst the most competitive and prestigious in Europe, with very few having been awarded to Portugal and particularly to social sciences. This is Helena Machado’s second ERC grant, further establishing her as an international reference in sociology.
Her new project, “Facial Recognition Technologies: Etho-Assemblages and Alternative Futures (fAIces)”, aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of the political, ethical, and social impacts of facial recognition technologies on citizenship and privacy. These technologies are commonly used for identification and tracking, storing billions of faces and feeding neural networks that are crucial to the development of artificial intelligence.
“We aim to understand how the use of these technologies may exacerbate discrimination and social inequality, for example, by exploring the perspectives of several groups that have never been studied together, including scientists, companies, activists, and artists, at a global level. We will also study the implications for Black communities in countries such as the USA, Canada, Brazil, Germany, France, the UK, and Spain,” says Helena Machado. The project will also adopt an innovative methodology to formulate a new social theory about the face. It aims to promote ethical debates and engage society while stimulating the imagination for alternative futures in the use of such technologies.
This is the 14th ERC grant for UMinho since 2013 (covering areas such as biomaterials, sociology, civil engineering, and medicine) and the second for CRIA, following Francisco Freire in 2017. “I am very pleased with this recognition, which also encourages other Portuguese teams and those in the social sciences to apply for this funding,” says Helena Machado. The scientist now aims to create a reference team in the sociology of artificial intelligence, bringing together interdisciplinary research at CRIA-UMinho by merging sociology and anthropology with digital humanities and computer vision: “fAIces is an ambitious project, and artificial intelligence is constantly evolving, but we will do everything to be a case study,” she adds.
“From tagging photos on social media to unlocking computers and the controversial use of facial recognition in public spaces, retail, schools, workplaces, airports, and law enforcement, facial processing technologies are increasingly present in various aspects of our lives”, Helena Machado notes. Although the expected benefits are linked to security and protection, critics often highlight that these technologies normalise surveillance, erode privacy, exacerbate discrimination, and contain significant flaws and inaccuracies.
Biographical note
Helena Machado, 54, was born in Guimarães. She holds a PhD in Sociology and Fundamental Methodologies from UMinho, where she lectures at the Institute of Social Sciences, which she has also chaired. Helena Machado leads the Scientific Council for Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) and co-chaired the Forensic Databasing Advisory Board, which advises the International Society for Forensic Genetics on ethical matters.
Helena Machado was a visiting professor at the Federal Universities of Pernambuco and Rio Grande do Sul (Brazil) and Durham and Essex Universities (UK). She is the (co-)author of over 200 scientific publications, including the books “Genetics and citizenship” and “Tracing technologies: prisoners’ views in the era of CSI”. She has received several awards, including UMinho’s Scientific Merit Award. Helena Machado has already secured two ERC grants, the first (consolidator grant) for the project “Exchange: forensic geneticists and the transnational sharing of genetic information in the EU”, valued at €1.8 million for the 2015-21 period.