Helen Hayes

Helen A. Hayes is a Ph.D. Candidate at McGill University where she examines the intersections between climate policy, tech regulation, and the Canadian resource economy. She holds a Master’s degree in Communication Studies from McGill University (2020) and an Honours Bachelor of Arts from the University of Toronto (Victoria College 1T8). As Research Manager at the Centre for Media, Technology, and Democracy, Helen oversees all research outputs and leads the AI Policy portfolio. Her work has been published in the Harvard Journal of Law & Technology, Interfaces: Essays on Computing & Culture, and Lecture Notes in Computer Science, amongst others. Helen is also a sessional lecturer in Environmental Media at the University of Calgary, a member of the Digital Governance Council of Canada’s drafting committee, and a co-author of the forthcoming books Voting Online: Technology and Democracy in Municipal Elections (McGill-Queen’s University Press, ’24) and Regulating Digital (UofT Press, ’25).

Publications

Goodman, N. and Hayes, H.A. (Eds.). (2025). Regulating Digital. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. [Forthcoming].

Hayes, H.A. (2024). Earth-system interactions and the automation of climate forecasting. Studies in Computing and Culture. Baltimore: John’s Hopkins University Press.

Hayes, H.A., McGregor, R.M., Stephenson, L., Lucas, J., and Anderson, C. (2024). Gambling with Democracy: Support for electoral reform in Canada. Canadian Journal of Political Science.  

Hayes, H.A. and Franzel, J. (2023). Techno-solutionism and strategies of delay: Low-carbon oil and the Bay du Nord project. Heliotrope Magazine, March 22, 2023. https://www.heliotropejournal.net/helio/techno-solutionism-and-strategies-of-delay.

Hayes, H.A., Goodman, N., McGregor, R.M., Spicer, Z., and Pruysers, S. (2022). The effect of exogenous shocks on the administration of online voting: Evidence from Ontario, Canada. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 13553.

Hayes, H.A. (2022). New approaches to critical AI studies: A case for anti-modernism and alternative futurisms. Interfaces 4.

Solomun, S., Polataiko, M., and Hayes, H.A. (2021). Platform responsibility and regulation in Canada: Considerations on transparency, legislative clarity, and design. Harvard Journal of Law and Technology, 34, 1-18.

Hayes, H.A, Rogers, H., Chan, K., and Wan, E. (2021). The dirty truth about ‘clean’ transport: A critical evaluation of ecological imperialism and the electric vehicle industry. Journal of Environmental Media. [Forthcoming].

Activity

Centre for Media, Technology, and Democracy reading group - a reading group that seeks to explore the current crisis of digital democracy and its assumptions through academic and journalistic accounts of how recent intersections of media and technology are reshaping democracy.