Ada Lovelace Day: Women, Technology and the Future

With Dr Anne-Marie Imafidon, Tahmima Anam, Alexandra Ault and Jeanette Winterson

This event takes place in the British Library Theatre and will be simultaneously live streamed on the British Library platform. Tickets may be booked either to attend in person, or to watch on our platform (online) either live or within 48 hours on catch up.  In person ticket bookers will also be sent a bonus link to the online event. Viewing links will be sent out shortly before the event.

Ada Lovelace Day is a celebration of Ada Lovelace (1815-1852), mathematician, writer and pioneer of computer coding, whose letters are held in the British Library. This event spans forward from her early vision, to the gender politics of Silicon Valley in Tahmima Anam’s satire The Startup Wife, and beyond into ‘a transhuman – even a post-human future,’ with Jeanette Winterson’s latest collection, 12 Bytes: How We Got Here; Where We Might Go Next.

Chaired by Dr Anne-Marie Imafidon who was the youngest girl ever to pass A-level computing (aged 11). She received her Master’s Degree in Mathematics and Computer Science from the University of Oxford, and since then has worked at Goldman Sachs, Hewlett-Packard and Deutsche Bank. She is a Visiting Professor at the University of Sunderland and sits on the Council of Research England. She also co-founded the Stemettes, an award-winning social initiative dedicated to inspiring and promoting the next generation of young women in the STEM sectors.

Jeanette Winterson was born in Manchester. Adopted by Pentecostal parents, she was raised to be a missionary. She left home at 16 to live in a Mini and get on with her education. After graduating from Oxford University she worked for a while in the theatre and published her first novel at 25: Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit. She has written 12 novels for adults, as well as children’s books, non-fiction and screenplays. She is Professor of New Writing at the University of Manchester.

Tahmima Anam is an award-winning novelist, short story writer, and anthropologist. Her first novel, A Golden Age, won the Commonwealth Writers Prize and went on to be translated into 27 languages. It was followed by The Good Muslim and The Bones of Grace. She is one of Granta’s best young British novelists and a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Born in Dhaka, Bangladesh, she now lives in London, where she is on the board of the music tech company ROLI.

Alexandra Ault is the British Library’s Lead Curator, Western Manuscripts 1601-1850. She is currently completing her PhD at University College London. She has worked at the National Portrait Gallery as an assistant curator, and at two major auction houses. Her particular areas of research interest are nineteenth-century publishing, the relationship between manuscript and print, and the ‘life’ of the literary manuscript during and after writing.

If you’re attending in person, please arrive no later than 15 minutes before the start time of this event. We are committed to the safety of our event bookers. Click here to find out how we are welcoming you to the Library safely.