About
I’m currently serving as Project Director of Data & Society Research Institute’s Algorithmic Impact Methods Lab, where I am also a Senior Researcher. For the 2023-2024 academic year, I am a Visiting Scholar at UC Berkeley’s Center for Science, Technology, Medicine & Society. I’m also a faculty member in the Master in Design for Responsible AI program at ELISAVA.
Previously, I was Director of Developer Engagement on the Green Software team at Intel, where I researched the user and developer experience of open source software. I was also part of Green Software Foundation’s Policy Working Group and was the lead researcher and author of their State of Green Software report. Before that, I was Assistant Professor of Media Studies and Program Director of Gender and Sexualities Studies at the University of San Francisco.
My first book, Death Glitch: How Techno-Solutionism Fails Us in This Life and Beyond (Yale University Press, Fall 2023) provides an ethnographic and historical account of the internet of death. Social media platforms were not originally designed for long-term use and intergenerational inheritance, but they have become sites for mourning and memorialization. I consider the temporal incompatibilities of startup culture— with its focus on real-time updates, fast-paced innovation, and short-term gains— and platforms' increasing intervention in the most profound aspects of human existence.
I write about the embodied care work necessary to maintain the afterlives of individuals, networks, and objects. My work has been published in academic journals such as Social Media + Society, Cultural Studies, and Social Text and in popular outlets including WIRED, The Verge, and The Baffler.
When I'm not being morbid, my other research interests include feminist technologies, secondhand economies, platform labor, climate activism in the tech industry, and histories of social media.
I received my Ph.D. from the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University, my M.A. in Social Sciences and Anthropology from the University of Chicago, and my B.A. in Anthropology from Kenyon College. My work has been supported by the Mellon Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Intel Science & Technology Center for Social Computing, the Consortium for History of Science, Technology, and Medicine, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.