Allison JoAnn Lester

Dr. Allison JoAnn Lester is an Assistant Teaching Professor and action research scholar in University College's Success by Design unit at Arizona State University, with an affiliate appointment in the Watts College of Public Service and Community Solutions. Her work sits at the intersection of artificial intelligence, digital literacy, participatory action research, and democratic life. She studies how ethical, community-engaged approaches to AI can strengthen civic trust, critical thinking, and student agency.

Dr. Lester leads national conversations on AI, elections, and democratic trust as Director of Curriculum Development for the ASU Mechanics of Democracy Lab and as a member of the AI + Elections Advisory Board. In 2025 she joined a bipartisan panel on Arizona Votes Forum: Trust & Technology, a PBS special produced in partnership with the Mechanics of Democracy Lab, where she discussed how emerging technologies — especially AI — shape election administration, public confidence, and civic readiness in an era of rapid technological change.

With nearly two decades of experience as an educator and educational leader, Dr. Lester has secured more than $2.1 million in grant funding for research and community-based initiatives that center participatory AI development, reflective practice, digital literacy, and equitable technology design. She studies how communities learn with and lead around AI, and how ethical AI integration can advance democratic engagement and social change.

In higher education, Dr. Lester is known for pioneering transparent and student-led models of generative AI integration. She co-creates AI-use policies with undergraduate students, builds custom GPTs to support action research projects, and develops AI-supported reflective practice tools that preserve student voice while expanding analytical capacity. Her courses invite first-generation and emerging leaders to design AI-driven solutions to community challenges, blending critical media literacy, ethical inquiry, and hands-on prototyping.

She is the host of Thinking Through, a nationally recognized podcast on AI in society and education, produced by ASU’s University College. The show creates space for slow, meaningful dialogue about AI, belonging, authorship, persuasion, and the future of learning. The podcast has been recognized among leading AI-in-education platforms and features conversations with researchers, designers, technologists, and students.

Dr. Lester’s broader body of work reflects a long-standing commitment to participatory design and sociotechnical imagination. Signature initiatives include:

• Principled AI: An AI Digital Literacy Tool Co-Designed with Stakeholders to Restore Trust in Elections: A $100,000 Principled Innovation Moonshot Grant-funded initiative uniting students, election officials, and technologists to co-design an Explainable AI tool for ethical election communication. Through AI & Elections Boot Camps and a dedicated sandbox environment, stakeholders prototype transparent, character-grounded AI systems that model principled civic communication and strengthen democratic trust.
• SHIFT+Perspective: AI-Powered Tool for Critical Thinking in the University Classroom: An AI-powered platform co-designed with ASU students to help decode viral claims, analyze bias frames, map source networks, and practice contrarian thinking. Developed through AI Hackathons and human-centered design sessions with students and civic partners, including election officials.
• Digital Playscape: A large-scale public STEM installation integrating AI, AR, and immersive technologies in downtown Cincinnati, engaging thousands of residents and providing educator professional development on emerging technologies, and featured in People's Liberty grantee portfolio.
• TRASHION: A Youth Participatory Action Research project exploring sustainable futures, speculative design, and sociotechnical systems through live-action role play, arts-based inquiry, and youth-led media production. The project is featured in the Action Research Network of the Americas Annual Report.
• The Garage: A youth-designed community innovation space created through participatory action research in an underserved neighborhood, published scholarship in the Bank Street Occasional Paper Series.

Across these initiatives, Dr. Lester has directed youth research fellowships, mentored student capstone projects in community impact design, and developed interdisciplinary curricula that blend AI, democracy, and social change. Her scholarship examines authorship, agency, and ethical decision-making in AI-enhanced learning environments, and she is currently advancing theoretical work on AI within the action research paradigm.

An elected board member of the Action Research Network of the Americas, Dr. Lester supports multilingual access, community-based scholarship, and culturally responsive review processes. She also serves as Guest Editor for the Journal of Participatory Research Methods Special Issue on arts-based participatory action research.

With nearly two decades in education, including early work as a K-5 special education teacher, Dr. Lester brings a human-centered lens to AI innovation. Her work asks a central question: How can we design AI systems with communities, not for them, in ways that strengthen democracy rather than erode it?