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Sengers, Phoebe J.

Associate Professor
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I am a faculty member in Information Science and Science & Technology Studies at Cornell, where I lead the Culturally Embedded Computing group. I am a member of the field of Computer Science and am affiliated with Visual Studies and Art. I am a computer scientist and a cultural theorist, working primarily in Human-Computer Interaction and cultural studies of technology. I develop culturally embedded systems; i.e., new kinds of interactive technology that respond to and encourage critical reflection on the place of technology in culture. Specifically, I analyze IT in the context of North American consumer culture and the rise of efficiency, productivity, and faith in technoscience as hegemonic cultural values. I use insights from cultural analysis of IT to identify and rethink the assumptions underlying technologies, to build new applications for computing, and to develop new techniques for designing and evaluating technologies.

My current research focuses on two core themes: (1) working towards sustainable IT design, with awareness of the central role that computing and other technologies play in consumer culture; (2) understanding the difference it makes in IT design to take the humanities and arts as central to our forms of knowledge production, in addition to science and engineering. A major component of my current work is a long-term design-ethnographic and historical study of sociotechnological change in the small, traditional fishing community of Change Islands, Newfoudland.

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