Upcoming Speakers
Want to drop in and attend? Get the link from our meeting administrator, Katie Pine khpine@gmail.com
Find some of the publications from these speakers in our Zotero bibliography here.
2023
Jan. 6, Friday: Emily West on Living in an Amazon World: How We Fell in Love With Convenience, Why It Matters, and What Comes Next
Jan. 20: Marcin Zarod on Snowden to EU Data Protection Laws: How Hackers and Hacktivists Participated in the Change of EU policy, and How it Changed the Culture and Profession of Information Security.
Feb. 3: Andrea Alarcon on Identity as Safety Net: Re-creating Global Supply Chains in Independent Online Work
Feb. 16: Amrita Pande, University of Cape Town, Author of Birth Controlled: Selective Reproduction and Neoliberal Eugenics in South Africa and India
March 3: Lana Swartz. TDB
March 17: Janaki Srinivasan on her book The Political Lives of Information
March 28: Valerio De Stefano and Antonio Aloisi on their book Your Boss is an Algorithm
April 14: Allison Pugh on What is a Human for? Interpersonal Workers Face the Automation Frontier
April 28: Melissa Villa Nicholas, Honorable Mention winner of our inaugural Labor Tech Book Award for her book Latinas on the Line
May 8: Sana Ahmad on Limits of Automation in Content Moderation Work: Evidence from India and Germany
June 9: Karen Levy on her book Data Driven: Truckers, Technology, and the New Workplace Surveillance
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Archive of Past Speakers
2022
January 14: Hannah Zeavin on The Distance Cure: A History of Teletherapy
January 28: Tom Boellstorff and Braxton Soderman on Second-Generation Labor and Videogame Design: Making Games for Intellivision, 1979–1983
February 11: Bhumika Chauhan on Offshoring, Deskilling and Global Unevenness in a Transnational Software Firm
February 25: DigitalSTS Contributors, Laura Forlano, Luke Stark, Christina Dunbar-Hester, Winnie Poster, Juan Salamanca, Daniel Cardoso
March 11: Karina Rider, on ‘Can Tech Still Save the World?’ Working through Disillusionment with Big Tech via Civic Technology
March 24: Rutvica Andrijasevic, Julie Yujie Chen, and Marc Steinberg on their book Media and Management
April 8 (Cancelled): Curtis Marez on Farm Worker Futurism: Speculative Technologies of Resistance
April 22: Hee Rin Lee, on Human Robot Symbiosis in Manufacturing Settings
May 6: Elizabeth (Liz) Chiarello on Trojan Horse Technologies: How Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs Help Healthcare Providers Police Patients
May 20: Gavin Mueller on his book Breaking Things at Work
June 3: Sofya Aptekar, Bhumika Chauhan, Becca Roskill, and Nora Weber on Labor Organizing On and Through Campus
July 22: Mara Mills on Overload: Switchboard Operators and Disability in the History of Automation
August 17: Joy Ming on Designing for Worker In/Visibility in Two Frontline Health Contexts
Sept 2: Robert Dorschel on The Subjectivity of Tech Workers
Sept 13: Albert Fox Cahn, Executive Director, Surveillance Technology Oversight Project
Sept 30: Sarah Gram, Repairing Relationships: Navigating Technology and Surveillance at the Genius Bar
Oct. 14: Kelly Bronson on Immaculate Conception of Data: Agribusiness, Activists and Their Shared Politics of the Future
Oct. 28: Inauguration of our East or Inter-Asia Hub, with a spotlight on Rolien Hoyng and Gladys Pak Lei Chong’s book Critiquing Communication Innovation: New Media in a Multipolar World
Nov. 11: Murali Shanmugavelan on his Critical Caste and Technology Studies Syllabus
Dec. 9: Inauguration of our Latin America Hub, with a panel discussion on our core themes of labor, technology, feminism, decolonialism, and anti-racism in the context of Latin America, led by Paola Ricaurte, Liliana Gil, and Verónica Uribe del Aguila
2021
- Jan 15 – Rafa Grohmann – Platform Labor in Brazil
- Jan 28 – Darren Byler – Digital Enclosure of Turkic Muslims
- Feb 12 – Katie Pine and Claus Bossen on The Data Work of Clinical Documentation Integrity Specialists
- Feb 26 – Silvia Lindtner – Prototype Nation
- March 12 – Precarity Lab – Technoprecarious
- March 26 – Cait McKinney – Information Activism
- April 8 – Heather Berg – Porn Work / Sex, Labor, and Late Capitalism
- May 7 – Anne Jonas on Chasing Data Tensions of Teaching in Virtual Schools
- May 21 – Michael Siciliano on The Platformed Alienation of Judgment in Digital Content Production
- June 4 – Ben Shestakofsky and Shreeharsh Kelkar on Making Platforms Work
- June 18 – Dan Greene – The Promise of Access / Technology, Inequality, and the Political Economy of Hope
- July 2 – Claire Ma and Tanika Raychaudhuri, Political Socialization at Work / Asian Americans in the Tech Sector Workplace
- July 16 – Yovanna Pineda, Diana Montano, and Sonia Robles – History of Technology in Africa and the Americas
- Aug 13 – Katie Helke and Winnie Poster – MIT Book Series on Labor and Tech
- Aug 27 – Dylan Mulvin on his book Proxies: The Cultural Work of Standing In
- Sept 10 – Katie Wells on Low Expectations: The Rise of Uber and the Fall of the City
- Sept 24 – Erin Hatton on her book Coerced: Work Under Threat of Punishment
- Oct 15 – Anna Lauren Hoffman, Mariam Asad, Pat Garcia, Stefanie Dunning, and Natalia Smirnov with Steph Jordan in a Conversation on Engaging Refusal
- Oct 29 – Rida Qadri on Platform Labor in Indonesia
- Nov 12 – Jovan Lewis on Criminal Repair in the Jamaican Lotto Scam
- Dec 10 – Lindsey Cameron and Hatim Rahman on Expanding the Locus of Resistance: Understanding the Co-Constitution of Control and Resistance in the Gig Economy
2020
- Jan 3 – Tarangini Sriraman on Refugees and Their Displaced Documents of Identity
- Jan 17 – Linnet Taylor on What does data justice have to say about social justice
- Jan 31 – Brainstorm Session – Labor Tech Next Stage?
- Feb 14 – Noopur Raval and colleagues on the Gig Economy in India
- Feb 28 – Morgan Ames on The Charisma Machine
- March 20 – Peer Support Discussion – Tech, Gig, and Teaching Work Under Coronavirus
- March 24 – Seda Gurses and colleagues on Protective Optimization Technologies
- April 17 – Nataliya Nedzhvetskaya and JS Tan on their Public Repository of Collective Actions in Tech
- May 1 – Christina Dunbar-Hester on Hacking Diversity
- June 5 – Tammy Katsabian on Labor, Technology and the Liquid Modernity
- June 19 – Sayak Valencia on Gore Capitalism
- July 16 – Thao Phan on Siri’s Gendered Labor
- July 28 – Alexandrea Ravenelle on Hustle and Gig
- Aug 17 – Eileen Buckholtz – Queens of Code
- Sept 4 – Angele Christin and Melissa Valentine – Algorithms at Work
- Sept 25 – Simanti Dasgupta on Sex Work, HIV/AIDs, Anti-Trafficking in India
- Oct 23 – Liz Chiarello on Policing Patients
- Oct 9 – Leah Horgan on Smart Cities and Surveillance
- Nov 9 – Noura Howell on Biosensing, Biopolitics, Design
- Nov 16 – Cecilia Aragon on her book Flying Free
- Dec 17 – Freeform Discussion – Researching and Coping in a Pandemic
- Dec 4 – Debora Leal – Lessons from the Edge of Capitalism
2019
- Jan 11 – T.L. Taylor on Watch Me Play
- Jan 25 – Virgina Eubanks on Automating Inequality
- Feb 8 – Ellie Harmon and Janine Berg from the ILO on “Digital Labour Platforms and The Future of Work”
- Feb 22 – Megan Finn on Heroic Repair
- March 8 – Mel Gregg on Counterproductive
- March 22 – D’Ignazio and Klein on Data Feminism
- April 5 – Freeform Discussion – Ethical Dilemmas of Writing about Resistance
- April 19 – Seyram Avle on Technology #MadeInAfrica
- May 3 – Jenny Rhee on The Robotic Imaginary
- June 7 – Sai Englert on the Fairwork Project
- August 2 – Michael Palm on The New Economy and Ecology of Music on Vinyl
- August 16 – Soumyo Das on Datafying Antipoverty Programs
- Sept 20 – Niels van Doorn on Varieties of Platform Labor
- Oct 4 – Zsuzsa Gille on Waste Labor
- Oct 18 – Danny Spitzberg on Tech Workers Coalition
- Nov 8 – Sarah Fox on Interrogating the Smart Washroom
- Nov 22 – Mira Wallis, Manuela Bojadzijev, and Moritz Altenried on Platform Mobilities
- Dec 6 – Lilly Irani on Chasing Innovation
- Dec 16 – Smarika Lulz on Interrogating the Politics of Data Governance
2018
- Jan 12 – Chris Benner on Inequality in the Labor Market of Silicon Valley
- Jan 26 – Sarah Roberts on Commercial Content Moderation
- Feb 16 – Luke Stark on Emotion and Race in Digital Animate
- Feb 26 – Michelle Ruiz – Towards a ‘Smart Citizenry’?
- March 16 – Virtual Ability – Meet on Second Life
- March 30 – Diana Montano on Electro-domesticas
- April 13 – Carolina Bank Munoz on her book Building Power from Below
- April 27 – Ilana Gershon on her book Down and Out in the New Economy
- May 11 – Jen Kagen and Yana Calou on Coworker.org
- May 25 – Eleanor Marchant on Kenyan IT entrepreneurs
- June 8 – Leon Morenas on Demonetization and eMoney
- June 22 – Maggie Jack on Ridehailing apps for drivers in Cambodia
- July 15 – Write Comments on Mary Gray’s book manuscript – Post on Google Doc
- July 20 – Hamid Ekbia and Bonnie Nardi on Heteromation
- Aug 3 – Jack Qiu on China’s Digital Working Class
- Sept 7 – Nick Seaver on his book The Making of Algorithmic Music Recommendation
- Sept 27 – Julia, Alexandra, and Alex on Carework Gig Economy
- Oct 19 – Freeform Discussion – Open Science, Abolish Peer Review
- Nov 9 – Madison Van Oort – The Emotional Labor of Surveillance
- Nov 30 – Kate Miltner on Learn to Code Discourse
- Dec 14 – Asli Telli Aydemir on P2P Platforms for solidarity
2017
- Jan 27 – Sareeta Amrute on Encoding Race
- Feb 24 – Julie Chen on Laboring for Big Data Production
- March 24 – Lilly Nguyen on Ethnic Platforms
- April 14 – Marie Hicks on Programmed Inequality
- April 28 – Luke Stark on Animated GIFs
- May 12 – Aneesh on System Identities
- June 9 – David Golumbia on The Politics of Bitcoin
- June 23 – Zeynep Gursel on Image Brokers
- Aug 23 – Frank Pasquale on Platform Capitalism
- Sept 8 – Steph Jordan on Sexual Harassment in the Scientific Workplace
- Sept 21 – Tom Boellstorff on Disability and the Digital Entrepreneur
- Oct 6 – Sreela Sarkar on Passionate Producers
- Oct 27 – Michael Palm on The New Old, Vinyl Records in a Digital Age
- Nov 17 – Brooke Erin Duffy on her book Not Getting Paid to do What You Love
- Dec 6 – Geeta Patel on Risky Bodies & Techno-Intimacy
2016
- Feb 5 – Discussion – Border as Method
- April 15 – Discussion – Digital Housewife
- May 5 – Discussion – LA Times Series on Digital Humanities
- June 2 – Rolien Hoyng on “From Infrastructural Breakdown to Data Vandalism”, and others
- June 15 – Aouragh and Chakravartty join us for “Infrastructures of Empire”
- July 6 – Discussion – Lilly Nguyen and colleagues’ Feminist Hacking / Making
- August 11 – Tom Boellstorff joins us for “Theorizing the Digital Real”
- August 24 – Discussion – Precarious Creativity
- Sept 15 – Ned Rossiter joins us for Software, Infrastructure, Labor
- Oct 6 – Discussion – Labors of Maintenance
- Oct 28 – Ergin Bulut presents on Video Game Development as Labor of Love
- Nov 10 – Noopur Ravel presents on Ridesharing in India
- Dec 15 – Cathy O’Neil discusses her book Weapons of Math Destruction
2015
- January 26 – Lilly Nguyen presents on Ethnic Platforms in Vietnam
- February 12 – Discussion Part 1 – Productive Body
- February 23 – Discussion Part 1 – Seizing the Means of Production – Part 1 – Intro
- March 12 – Discussion Part 2 – Productive Body
- April 20 – Discussion Part 2 – Seizing the Means of Production – Ch. 4 and others
- April 30 – Discussion on Bodily Labor, Feminist Theory and Infrastructure
- May 11 – Itty Abraham presents on Technology Czars in India
- May 28 – Meeting Hosted at Boğaziçi University, Istanbul – Why How Collaborate
- June 8 – Discussion – Zachariah on postcolonial theory
- July 9 – Discussion – Gillian Hart, Anna Tsing, and others
- July 20 – Lilly Irani presents the Intro chapter of her book Chasing Innovation
- Sept 3 – Discussion – Vibrant Matter – recommended chapters 2 and 7
- Sept 17 – Mel Gregg tells us about her article “Circuits of Labor”
- Oct 2 – Discussion – Digital Resistance – The Exploit, and Terranova chapter
- Oct 13 – Luke Stark and Alex Rosenblat present on their research on Uber work
- Nov 13 – Meetup at 4S, Annual Meeting of the Society for Social Studies of Science and Technology
- Dec 4 – Michael Palm presents on The History of Dialing as Consumer Labor
2014
- Feb 6 – Discussion – Surveillance, resistance, regulation
- Feb 27 – Marisa Cohn Presents on “Success is Holding On”
- March 13 – Winnie Poster presents on Multi-surveillance
- March 27 – Discussion – Affect
- April 25 – Discussion – Race and Labor
- May 9 – Luke Stark presents on Emotional Context of Information Privacy
- June 6 – Discussion – Gender, Sexuality, Tech
- June 20 – Discussion – Late 20th Century Political Economy – Brand, Ferguson, White
- August 1 – Discussion – Digital Dead End
- August 18 – Discussion Part 1 – Arendt – Labor and Work
- August 29 – Discussion Part 2 – Arendt – Action
- Sept 12 – Lilly Irani presents on Hackathon Coding Politics
- Oct 6 – Karl Mendonca on “New Media, Old Networks”
- Oct 31 – Steph Jordan presents on Anticipation Work
- Nov 20 – Discussion – Speculate This
2013
- Oct 25 – Discussion – What is work and labor – Sanyal, Starr, Suchman
- Oct 29 – Kavita Philip presents on Postcolonial Piracy, Nima Yolmo presents on Money, Technology and Society
- Nov 8 – Discussion – Care and reproduction
- Nov 15 – Lilly squared! Nguyen on Evangelism and Translation in Open Software; Irani on Microwork
- Nov 19 – Discussion – Capital and political economy
- Nov 26 – Alberto Morales on Situating Capital; Norma Mollers on Research in the Context of Video Surveillance
- Dec 3 – Eclectic Discussion – Elyachar, Huws, Jackson, Traweek