Images from Information, Policy, Law, and Ethics, summer 2019. Students presenting their maps of global technology supply chain (top); students who have camouflaged their faces to resist facial recognition technology (bottom) (Thanks to my former students for their permission to share their photos)
Student at the “Analogue City” exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York as part of class field trip, September 2022
I currently teach at NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering, where I encourage engineering students to use humanistic methods and perspectives to critically analyze the impacts of technology on society.
I am currently advising two master’s students: Hanyong Yang (Tisch ITP) and Akanksha Kevalramani (Gallatin).
Although I am not currently accepting PhD students as a primary advisor I can co-advise and sit on committees for students who appropriately match my research background and interests.
Spring 2025 Course Schedule
Design for Social Impact (spring 2024 + 2025, NYU Tandon)
Course Description: Developed for students in the master’s IDM program, this course draws on science & technology studies, technology design, and the arts to analyze the values embodied in technology design and to work towards designing technologies to promote positive social impact.
Technologies and Social Movements (spring 2025, NYU Tandon)
Course Description: Technologies of all kinds play critical - and varied - roles in building awareness for and accomplishing goals for social movements. The first goal of this course is to equip students in engineering with theoretical and methodological frameworks to study the roles that technologies play in social movements, and how social movements might change as technologies do. The second goal is to understand how social movements are working to create a world in which people thrive, sometimes resisting certain consequences of emerging technology (e.g. increased loneliness, inequality, or environmental destruction) and sometimes pushing for technology access or advancement (e.g. medical innovations). We will address these topics through discussion, art/design, debate, oral presentations, multi-media, and other interactive activities. After an introduction to social movements and critical theoretical frameworks, we will shift to focused units on social movements advocating for labor, health care, and the environment.
Past Courses, Full Instructor:
Qualitative Methods for Designers (fall 2024, NYU Tandon)
Course description: In this course, we will explore, learn, and develop a variety of tools and frameworks to use in conducting forms of creative research, with a focus on approaches and methods that are useful to creative practitioners: broadly speaking, we will be dealing with approaches that are both oriented towards research in the field, as well as research driven by creative practice and its tangible outcomes. Apart from methods and methodologies, we will be reading literature from and adjacent to the arts and design on research, in order to get a better sense of how creative practitioners think and practice research. Developed for students in the NYU IDM master’s program.
Ethics and Technology (fall 2021, 2022, 2024, summer 2022, NYU Tandon)
Course description: Aimed at engineers and computer scientists, this course equips students with a toolkit for critical ethical analysis by exploring ethical issues in technology through readings, case studies, lectures, class discussions, and activities. The class provides a cross-disciplinary ethics foundation, drawing from moral philosophy as well as social science disciplines, using case studies from real-life situations to understand, discuss, and critique the value systems and power relationships embedded in technology. Students learn how emerging technologies advantage some communities and disadvantage others, create new opportunities while diminishing others, and promote social advancement while also replicating historical patterns of marginalization. By focusing on the ethical, cultural, and historical contexts, this course provides students with a deeper and more nuanced understanding of engineering as both a technical and social discipline.
Transnational Technology (spring 2022, 2023 + 2024, NYU Tandon)
Course Description: Digital tools connect the world in unprecedented ways while simultaneously bringing new frictions. The political economy of platforms leaves many global users out of decision making and technology accompanies and exacerbates human rights violations around the world. Yet we also see diverse global examples of creative appropriation that help users tailor the use of tools for their workplaces, personal goals and local environments. The first aim of this course is to equip students in engineering and social science with theoretical and methodological frameworks to study how technologies are moving through the world and what their broader societal implications are. The second aim is to help students think critically and ethically about designing policies and technologies for global ICT dissemination.
Information, Policy, Law, and Ethics (summer 2019, Cornell University)
Course description: This course investigates the ethical, legal, and social foundations of contemporary information technology. Through lectures, readings, and independent projects, we will analyze and engage contemporary challenges ranging from privacy in big data, mobile computing and national security environments, to the nature of innovation, property, and collaboration in an increasingly networked world. The course draws on cases from the fields of science, health care, education, politics, and international development, but above all it draws on YOUR experiences as a user, consumer, builder, and contributor to the global world of technology. Through this course you’ll learn about the key frameworks, processes, laws and institutions that govern the contemporary world of technology, along with key theories and methods from the academic fields that shape and inform them (law, philosophy, political science, economics, communication, sociology, management, etc.). But above all you’ll learn to engage critically and strategically with the worlds of information and technology around you, deciding what kind of information consumer, user, and citizen YOU want to be.
Past courses, Graduate teaching assistant (Cornell University):
Design for Social Impact (spring 2016)
Course description: The social impact of technologies is typically thought about fairly late, if ever, in the design process. Indeed, it can be difficult at design time to predict what effects technologies will have. Nevertheless, design decisions can inadvertently "lock in" particular values early on. In this course, we will draw on science & technology studies, technology design, and the arts to analyze the values embodied in technology design and to design technologies to promote positive social impact. What social and cultural values do technology designs consciously or unconsciously promote? To what degree can social impact be "built into" a technology? How can we take social and cultural values into account in design?
Information, Policy, Law, and Ethics (fall 2015)
Advanced Human Computer Interaction (spring 2015)
Course description: Focuses on the design of computer interfaces and software from the user's point of view. The goal is to teach user interface designs that "serve human needs" while building feelings of competence, confidence, and satisfaction. Topics include formal models of people and interactions, collaborative design issues, psychological and philosophical design considerations, and cultural and social issues. Winner of Information Science best graduate student teaching award.