Keynote Speakers

Lucy Suchman

Lucy Suchman is Professor of Sociology at Lancaster University. Her research interests within the field of feminist science and technology studies are focused on technological imaginaries and material practices of technology design, particularly developments at the interface of bodies and machines. Her current research extends her longstanding critical engagement with the field of human-computer interaction to contemporary warfighting, including the figurations that inform immersive simulations, and problems of “situational awareness” in remotely-controlled weapon systems. She is concerned with questions of whose bodies are incorporated into these systems, how and with what consequences for social justice and the possibility for a less violent world. Her most recent book, Human-Machine Reconfigurations: Plans and Situated Actions expanded edition, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2007.

Paul Edwards

Paul Edwards is Professor in the School of Information and the Department of History at the University of Michigan and the William J. Perry Fellow in International Security, Center for International Security and Cooperation, Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University. His research explores the history, politics, and cultural aspects of computers, information infrastructures, and global climate science. His most recent project focuses on building better knowledge infrastructures for the Anthropocene epoch, that is, the era in which humanity is called to account for — and to refashion — its role in the planetary metabolism. He is the co-editor (with Geoffrey C. Bowker) of the Infrastructures book series (MIT Press), and serves on the editorial boards of Big Data & Society: Critical Interdisciplinary Inquiries, Information & Culture: A Journal of History, and Internet Histories: Digital Technology, Culture, and Society. His most recent book is A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming (MIT Press, 2010).