Programs › La Jolla, CA
Studies multimodal and multisensory interaction, such as gesture and the senses, in scientific laboratories and everyday technology use through ethnographic and ethnomethodological research.
Studies how violence, mortality, pain, and illness shape political subjectivity, drawing on performance studies, cultural studies, and queer and gender studies.
Studies how intellectual property law intersects with race, gender, and nation, examining Ghanaian adinkra and kente cloth, U.S. quilting, and Black indigeneities in Africa and the diaspora.
Makes independent films centered on African American women and writes on film history, world cinema, folklore, and African and African American cinema.
Critically analyzes digital media technologies and the automation of surveillance in the United States, including facial recognition and the corporate police surveillance economy.
Studies the cultural politics of high-tech work and innovation in India and global AI economies through ethnography, and designs software such as Turkopticon that offers alternatives to platforms.
Studies sign languages, especially American Sign Language, and how a new sign language develops structure such as word order across generations of signers.
Studies the history and culture of disability, technology, and design, including architecture, material culture, and the senses, drawing on feminist, crip, and queer theories of embodiment.
Studies tourism, capitalism, space, and the politics of nature and heritage, with ethnographic work on tourism, megaprojects, and Maya territorial defense in Yucatán, Mexico.
Studies how youth, families, and schools use media and technology for civic participation, learning, and community development, using ethnographic, qualitative, and design-based research.
Studies the cultural industries, financialization, and media ownership using critical political economy of media, including independent music in the streaming age.
Studies the politics of visual representation around Colombia's armed conflict, including counterinsurgency marketing and branding, through multimodal anthropology, photography, and documentary.
Studies visual and digital media cultures in education, disability, and environmental activism, and creates collaborative media projects on Tourette syndrome and refugee wellness.
Studies the history of advertising, corporate communication, and promotional culture, including how sponsored media such as PSAs, pamphlets, and educational films sold American capitalism.
Studies how corporate, legal, and financial systems shape entertainment, using business and legal history to examine broadcasting, streaming, film financing, copyright, and comics.
Studies art, museums, maintenance and repair, and the labor and ecologies that sustain cultural objects, working across sociology, science and technology studies, and design.
Studies technological change and social inequality through historically attuned ethnography, from tech-driven school reform to Silicon Valley's growth amid ecological limits.
Studies radical placemaking in environmental justice and abolition organizing, using archival research, surveys, participant observation, and institutional ethnography, including in Guatemala.
Studies security, space, and mobility between the United States and Latin America, and urban river revitalization movements, using ethnographic methods.
Studies AI, data science, and content moderation on online platforms, including bias auditing of language models, using ethnography and computational and mixed methods.
Studies how language and media practices shape inequality for Latinx and Arab communities, from Spanish-language community radio to news coverage of Gaza, drawing on sociolinguistics.
Studies U.S. film and television production history and contemporary media industry labor, focusing on gender, race, and class in feminized and below-the-line creative work.