Tech tackling violence

✨ Watch on YouTube or listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

One in two women will experience violence over their lifetime. In the time it takes to listen to this episode, around 200 incidents will be reported to police. And that is a fraction of what actually happens.

In this special live event, presented by Here East and Plexal, we ask a pressing question: can technology — the same technology that has amplified and enabled so much of this harm — become the most powerful weapon against it?

Host Lou-Davina Stouffs, Director of Advisory Services at Plexal, chairs a conversation with Laura Suggitt, founder of The Meritocracy and architect of the UK's end-to-end rape review; Eleanor Kaye, Chief of Staff at Augur, whose AI behaviour-detection technology is making CCTV on transport networks genuinely intelligent for the first time; and Jamie Hodsdon of Waymo, whose driverless ride-hailing service is arriving in London this year with safety by design at its core.

Together they explore what it means to build technology that prevents harm rather than just responding to it, why data governance is inseparable from survivor safety, and why the £6 billion flowing into UK AI investment each year contains within it a profound, largely untapped opportunity — if the builders are willing to ask the right questions before they ship.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Violence against women and girls is a national security crisis. The scale is comparable to any other major security threat — yet funding, political will and public awareness have never matched the reality.

• The same technology enabling harm can be redirected to prevent it. From AI behaviour-detection on transport networks that can flag incidents before they escalate, to driverless vehicles that remove the risk posed by drivers entirely, the tools already exist.

• Safety by design is not optional — it's a moral obligation for anyone building technology. Every product that involves communication, surveillance or location data has the potential to be weaponised against women.

Watch the episode on YouTube below, or listen via your preferred podcast app.