Associate Professor, University of Copenhagen
Contributor, Platypus, The CASTAC Blog
Research Interests
Computers | Digital Anthropology | Expertise | Feminist STS | Gender | Labor | Subjectivity |
About Samantha
I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Copenhagen and affiliated with the Copenhagen Center for Social Data Science (SODAS). My research centres the production of norms, values, and inequities in in relation to computing and data cultures, particularly in relation to gender and labour. My current research interests focus particularly on value(s) and visions of the future in relation to tech entrepreneurship.
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Contributions to Platypus, The CASTAC Blog
View all of Samantha's posts on Platypus, The CASTAC Blog.
Cultures of Trust in Computing and Beyond
What does it mean to trust? In this post I explore how there are specific ways of producing trust in computer science education. I draw on ethnographic fieldwork conducted for my PhD in an undergraduate computer science program in Singapore, where I examined the “making” of computer scientists—how students are shaped as socio-technical persons through computer science education. During my fieldwork, I conducted participant observation in eight undergraduate computer science courses across all years (first to fourth) with a focus on required core courses for the computer science program, which is what I draw primarily on for this post. I also conducted interviews with students, professors, and administrators; policy and curriculum analysis; and participant observation in the department, university, and tech community more generally. I also myself studied computer science as an undergraduate student, which led to my interest in this topic. (more…) (read more...)
The Anti-Politics of Women in Tech
Almost daily are news articles about women in tech. Among these on the day I wrote this post, for example, were an article in Marie Claire, the women’s magazine, called “How Much Have Things Really Changed for Women in Technology?” and another in India’s business newspaper Mint titled “Two kinds of pay gap in the IT industry: NetApp’s Mark Bregman.” Both articles touch on several issues about women in tech, and STEM fields more generally; the cornerstone in each, however, is simply the number of women in the tech world—or the lack thereof, compared with men. This is a problem that has been explored since at least the mid-1970s in computer science (e.g., Montanelli Jr. and Mamrak 1976), longer for some other STEM fields. More recently this issue was highlighted last year, particularly in the media and public attention, when large tech companies like Google, Apple, Twitter, and Facebook released “diversity (read more...)