About
I direct Data & Society Research Institute’s new Climate, Technology, and Justice program. Previously, I led Data & Society’s Algorithmic Impact Methods Lab. For the next two years, I am the PI of a NSF ReDDDoT planning grant awarded to Data & Society, along with co-PIs Dr. Mar Hicks and Dr. Jess Reia at the University of Virginia, titled Assessing Environmental Impacts of AI Through Participatory Methods.
Before joining Data & Society, I was Director of Developer Engagement on the Green Software team at Intel, where I researched decarbonization software cultures. 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, 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.
My next solo book project examines the various waves of social scientists who have entered the tech industry in an attempt to both understand and transform it. Feminist ethnographers in tech position themselves as participant observers in their own workplaces while making new markets visible to corporations. Drawing on oral histories, workers’ inquiry, and memoir, I comb through the stories of generations of fellow ethnographer-outsiders in order to find commonalities and points of solidarity.
In general, my research juxtaposes histories of computing and automation with ethnographies of platform labor and care work. I’m currently writing about collective action in the tech industry around AI’s relationship to both labor rights and environmental impacts. 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.
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 National Science Foundation, the Internet Society Foundation, 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.