Welcome! I am a sociologist of science and technology at Princeton University, where I am a Link-Cotsen Fellow at the Society of Fellows and a lecturer in the Sociology Department. My research focuses on the complex intersections between people, science, and technological systems: for example, the role of digital images in science, the organization and coordination of distributed robotic spacecraft teams, the future of the digital humanities, and transnational technologies. My Ph.D. is from Cornell University in Science & Technology Studies, I have a Masters from Cambridge University in History and Philosophy of Science, and I worked as a postdoctoral researcher at University of California, Irvine's Informatics Department. At Princeton, I teach classes on the Sociology of Technology, Sociology of Science, and Human-Computer Interaction.
These days, you'll find me working on my first book manuscript, on my two-year study of the Mars Exploration Rover Mission, currently under consideration at Chicago University Press. As a followup to that study, I'm conducting a comparative ethnography with the Cassini Mission to Saturn, thanks to a National Science Foundation Grant in SocioComputational Systems, undertaken in collaboration with my Co-I's at University of California, Irvine. I'm running Princeton Tech/Soc, a group dedicated to understanding technology in society; and working with the nascent Digital Humanities Intitiative on campus. And I'm also co-editing the forthcoming volume, The New Representation in Scientific Practice (MIT Press, 2013), co-curating a special issue of Human Computer Interaction on Transnational HCI, and addressing the question of digital scholarship in Science and Technology Studies.
Here, you'll find more information about my projects, my publications, and my other engagements. You're also welcome to follow me on Twitter, where I tweet as @cyberlyra.
Op Ed on NASA budget cuts and international collaboration
My OpEd is up at PBS about the importance of international collaboration in space exploration. Using the example of the extraordinarily successful Cassini mission to Saturn, I argue that turning away from our ESA partners as suggested in this current budget is a damaging move. Check it out!
Upcoming Speaking Events
I'll be speaking with Alice Marwick of Microsoft Research at a public forum on Feminism and Social Media at Rutgers University this Thursday evening, February 16, at Douglass Residential College. I'll also be visiting Georgia Tech's School of Interactive Computing Human Centered Computing (HCC) group to give a talk about my work on robotic spacecraft teams on March 23rd. Hope to see you there!
Where are the Women in Tech Top 30?
My Op Ed on women in technology got published in Forbes today! The Op Ed takes issue with the fact that of the Top 30 under 30 in Technology in Forbes' influential list, only three were women -- and those women were posed alongside men. It's time to move away from the mental image of the young man in his hoodie tinkering in his garage to a more inclusive vision of technological entrepreneurship, one in which the women who are already making a difference in the world of technology are visible, welcome, and celebrated too.
Announcing: Princeton Tech/Soc!
I've recently founded an informal group on campus - Princeton Tech/Soc - that is bringing together students and faculty around the topic of technology and society. Princeton has a lot of community members interested in this space, but they are spread out between Architecture, History of Science, Sociology, the Center for Information Technology Policy, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, and even English. The purpose of the group is to gather for interdisciplinary discussion around key texts in Science and Technology Studies and Critical Informatics.
4S Panel: STS 2.0: Taking the Canon Digital
I'm so excited to announce our double panel session at the Society for Social Studies of Science this year in Cleveland: STS 2.0: Taking the Canon Digital. Along with my colleague David Ribes at Georgetown University, we've assembled two outstanding panels of scholars in Science and Technology Studies to address the question of digital studies in our field. The key questions we're addressing are:
- How do we renew the STS canon for contemporary studies of digital environments/interactions?