Welcome to my site!  I’m a Professor of Information Science and Science and Technology Studies, with additional graduate field appointments in Communication and Public Affairs. I’m also a former Chair of Cornell’s fabulous Information Science Department and former Dean of William Keeton House. Since July 2023, I have also served as Vice-Provost for Academic Innovation at Cornell.

Research

Here are some of the more specific areas I work in (with links to some recent-ish papers):

Infrastructure and collaboration:

My work has long been engaged with theoretical and practical problems of infrastructure: social and material forms foundational to collective human work and action of all kinds. This includes a long series of projects around the design and effects of new computational infrastructures in the sciences. More recently, my interest has turned to problems of computation and collaboration in fields beyond the sciences – for example, robotic surgery, fine art furniture production, and new media art; and to craft and improvisation as forms and models of collective action. Here are some recent examples:

Steven J. Jackson, Jen Liu, Ranjit Singh, and Samir Passi, “Maintaining Data Infrastructures,” in Tomasso Venturini, Amelia Acker, Jean-Christophe Plantin, Antonia Walford (eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Data and Society (Thousand Oaks, CA: forthcoming).

Amy Cheatle and Steven J. Jackson. 2023. “(Re)collecting Craft: Revising Materials, Techniques, and Pedagogies of Craft for Computational Makers,” in Proceedings of the 2023 Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) Conference.

Cindy Lin and Steven J. Jackson, “From Bias to Repair: Error as a Site of Negotiation and Collaboration in Applied Data Science Work,” in Proceedings of the 2023 Computer-Human Interaction (CHI) Conference.

Laewoo Kang and Steven J. Jackson, “Tech-Art-Theory: Improvisational Methods for HCI Teaching and Learning,” in Proceedings of the 2021 Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) Conference.

Amy Cheatle, Hannah Pelikan, Malte Jung, and Steven J. Jackson, “Sensing (Co-)operations: Articulation and Compensation in the Robotic Operating Room” in Proceedings of the 2019 Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) Conference.

Samir Passi and Steven J. Jackson, “Trust in Data Science: Collaboration, Translation, and Accountability in Corporate Data Science Projects” in Proceedings of the 2018 Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) Conference. 

Laewoo Kang, Steven J. Jackson and Phoebe Sengers, “Intermodulation: Improvisation and Collaborative Art Practice for HCI” in Proceedings of the 2018 Computer-Human Interaction (CHI) Conference.

Samir Passi and Steven J. Jackson, “Data Vision: Learning to See Through Algorithmic Abstraction” in Proceedings of the 2017 Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) Conference.

Maintenance, repair, and sustainability:

I am endlessly fascinated by processes of breakdown, maintenance and repair as central but neglected moments in our individual and collective relationships with infrastructure. Repair also turns out to be an excellent starting point for rethinking many central assumptions in both technology and the social sciences, from design, to sustainability, to innovation. These questions have led to ethnographic projects with mobile phone repair workers around the world, amateur fixer movements in Europe and North America, and to collaborative projects with interactive and new media artists. More recently, it’s led me to questions of hope as a radically undertheorized practice and engine of collective work; and, with some wonderful collaborators, to theories of unmaking as a necessary counterpart to dominant understandings of making and design (TOCHI special issue forthcoming!). Papers in this vein include:

Steven J. Jackson, Jen Liu, Ranjit Singh, and Samir Passi, “Maintaining Data Infrastructures,” in Tomasso Venturini, Amelia Acker, Jean-Christophe Plantin, Antonia Walford (eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Data and Society (Thousand Oaks, CA: forthcoming).

Steven J. Jackson, “Ordinary Hope,” in Maddalena Taccheti, Dimitris Papadopoulos, and Maria Puig de la Bellacasa, eds. Ecological Reparation: Repair, Remediation and Resurgence in Social and Environmental Conflict. Bristol University Press: Bristol, 2023.

Matt Ratto and Steven J. Jackson, “Reopening, Repetition and Resetting: HCI and the Method of Hope,” in Proceedings of the 2023 Computer-Supported Cooperative Work Conference.

Samar Sabie, Robert Soden, Steven J. Jackson, and Tapan Parikh, “Unmaking as Emancipation: Lessons and Reflections from Luddism,” in Proceedings of the 2023 Computer-Human Interaction (CHI) Conference.

Steven J. Jackson and Lara Houston, “The Poetics and Political Economy of Repair,” in Janet Wasko and Jeremy Swartz, eds. Media: A Transdisciplinary Inquiry. Intellect Books / University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 2021.

Steven J. Jackson, “Speed, Time, Infrastructure: Temporalities of Breakdown, Maintenance, and Repair,” in Judy Wajcman and Nigel Dodd, eds. The Sociology of Speed: Digital, Organizational, and Social Temporalities. Oxford Unversity Press: Oxford, 2017.

Lara Houston, Steven J. Jackson, Daniela Rosner, Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed, Meg Young, and Leo Kang, “Values in Repair,” in Proceedings of the 2016 Computer-Human Interaction (CHI) Conference.

Steven J. Jackson, “Rethinking Repair,” in Tarleton Gillespie, Pablo Boczkowski, and Kirsten Foot, eds. Media Technologies: Essays on Communication, Materiality and Society. MIT Press: Cambridge MA, 2014.

Technology, inequality and global development: 

Much of my work is driven by the desire to build more global stories of computing that reflect the full range and distribution of computing work, skills and experiences (a story vastly more rich and complex than the Silicon Valley-centered narratives usually heard). This includes instances of technology development oriented to concerns and communities in the global South (a la the badly-named field of Information and Communication Technologies for Development). It also calls attention to sites and actors traditionally left out of public imaginations of computing – for example, repair workers in Bangladesh and sub-Saharan Africa; or computing-related extraction workers in Indonesia, Chile, the Great Lakes region of Africa, or northern Canada. Finally, it looks to non-western contexts as sites of variation and potential innovation – places where new computing practices are being worked and reworked by the radically varied social, economic, and infrastructural conditions to be found around the world. I am deeply fortunate to have worked and learned with a wonderful set of students and collaborators in this space.

Palashi Vaghela, Steven J. Jackson, and Phoebe Sengers, “Interrupting Merit, Subverting Legibility: Navigating Caste in ‘Casteless’ Worlds of Computing,” in Proceedings of the 2022 Computer-Human Interaction (CHI) Conference.

Ranjit Singh and Steven J. Jackson, “Singh&Jackson_SeeingLikeanInfrastructure(CSCW2021),” in Proceedings of the 2021 Computer-Supported Cooperative Work Conference.

Margaret C. Jack, Sopheak Chann, Nicola Dell, and Steven J. Jackson, “Networked Authoritarianism: The Digital and Political Transitions of Cambodian Village Officials,” in Proceedings of the 2021 Computer-Supported Cooperative Work Conference.

Ian Arawjo, Ariam Mogos, Steven J. Jackson, Tapan Parikh and Kentaro Toyama, “ Computing Education for Intercultural Learning: Lessons from the Nairobi Play Project,” Proceedings of the 2019 Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) Conference.

Ranjit Singh and Steven J. Jackson, “From Margins to Seams: Imbrication, Inclusion and Torque in the Aadhaar Identification Project,” Proceedings of the 2017 Computer-Human Interaction (CHI) Conference.

Margaret Jack and Steven J. Jackson, “Infrastructure as Creative Action: Online Buying, Selling and Delivery in Phnom Penh,” Proceedings of the 2017 Computer-Human Interaction (CHI) Conference.

Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed, Nusrat Jahan, and Steven J. Jackson, “Residual Mobilities: Infrastructural Displacement and Post-Colonial Computing in Bangladesh” in Proceedings of the 2015 Computer-Human Interaction (CHI) Conference.

Older stuff:

Earlier, more obscure, or stuff that doesn’t quite fit under the categories above…

Qian Yang, Richmond Wong, Steven J. Jackson, Sabine Junginger, Margaret Hagan, Thomas Gilbert and John Zimmerman, “The Landscape and the Future of HCI-Policy Collaboration,” in Proceedings of the 2024 Computer-Human Interaction (CHI) Conference.

Steven J. Jackson and Sarah Barbrow, “Standards and/as Innovation: Protocols, Creativity, and Interactive Systems Development in Ecology” in Proceedings of the 2015 Computer-Human Interaction (CHI) Conference.

Stephanie Steinhardt and Steven J. Jackson, “Anticipation Work: Cultivating Vision in Collective Practice” in Proceedings of the 2015 Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) Conference.

Amy Cheatle and Steven J. Jackson, “Digital Entanglements: Craft, Computation and Collaboration in Fine Art Furniture Production,” in Proceedings of the 2015 Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) Conference.

Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed, Steven J. Jackson, and Mohamed Rashidujjaman Rifat, “Learning to Fix: Knowledge, Collaboration, and Mobile Phone Repair in Dhaka, Bangladesh” in Proceedings of the 2015 Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICTD) Conference.

Steven J. Jackson and Laewoo Kang, “Breakdown, Obsolescence and Reuse: HCI and the Art of Repair,” in Proceedings of the 2014 Computer-Human Interaction (CHI) Conference.

Steven J. Jackson and Ayse Buyuktur, “Who Killed WATERS? Mess, Method, and the Forensic Imagination in the Making and Unmaking of Large-Scale Science Networks”. Science, Technology and Human Values 39:2 (2014), pp 285-308.

Steven J. Jackson, Tarleton Gillespie, and Sandra Payette, “The Policy Knot: Reintegrating Policy, Practice and Design in CSCW Studies of Social Computing,” in Proceedings of the 2014 Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) Conference.

Steven J. Jackson and Sarah Barbrow, “Infrastructure and Vocation: Field, Calling, and Computation in Ecology” in Proceedings of the 2013 Computer-Human Interaction (CHI) Conference.

Steven J. Jackson, Stephanie Steinhardt, and Ayse Buyuktur, “Why CSCW Needs Science Policy (and Vice-Versa)” in Proceedings of the 2013 Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) Conference.

Paul N. Edwards, Steven J. Jackson, Melissa Chalmers, Geoffrey C. Bowker, Christine Borgman, David Ribes, Matt Burton, and Scout Calvert, Knowledge Infrastructures: Intellectual Frameworks and Research Challenges.  Report of the National Science Foundation / Sloan Foundation 2013 Knowledge Infrastructures Workshop.

Steven J. Jackson, Alex Pompe and Gabriel Krieshok, “Repair Worlds: Maintenance, Repair, and ICT for Development in Rural Namibia” in Proceedings of the 2012 Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) Conference.

Steven J. Jackson, David Ribes, Ayse Buyuktur, and Geoffrey C. Bowker, “Collaborative Rhythm: Temporal Dissonance and Alignment in Distributed Scientific Work,” in Proceedings of the 2011 Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) Conference.

Paul N. Edwards, Geoffrey C. Bowker, Steven J. Jackson, and Robin Williams, “An Agenda for Infrastructure Studies,” Journal of the Association for Information Systems, May 2009.

Brian Kahin and Steven J. Jackson, eds. “Designing Cyberinfrastructure for Collaboration and Innovation,” Special Issue of First Monday 12:6 (June 2007), URL: http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue12_6/index.html

Paul N. Edwards, Steven J. Jackson, Geoffrey C. Bowker, and Cory P. Knobel, Understanding Infrastructure: Dynamics, Tensions, and Design. Report of the National Science Foundation Workshop, “History and Theory of Infrastructure: Lessons for New Scientific Cyberinfrastructures.” (Ann Arbor: DeepBlue, 2007), http://hdl.handle.net/2027.42/49353.

Steven J. Jackson, “Water Models and Water Politics: Deliberative Design and Virtual Accountability,” in Proceedings of the 2006 Digital Government Conference, San Diego, May 22-24, 2006.

Steven J. Jackson, “Ex-Communication: Competition and Collusion in the U.S. Prison Telephone Industry,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 22:4 (October, 2005).

Teaching

INFO/STS 4260: Computing On Earth: Planetary Dimensions and Consequences of Computing
This experimental and collaborative class will explore the material ethics of computing – the ways in which computing rests upon, emerges from, and ultimately returns to the earth, with deep and sometimes negative implications for sustainability, equity and justice in a rapidly changing world.  Drawing on journalistic sources and academic fields ranging from anthropology, history and public policy to law, science and technology studies and human-computer interaction, the course will examine problems of computing-related sourcing and extraction, energy and water, and waste and repair, and how these are distributed and experienced in vastly different ways by different social groups and actors.  Cases and examples will be drawn from near-to-hand and around the world.  Assignments will include weekly reading reflections, seminar leadership, and experimental individual and group projects that students will have some hand in determining.

INFO 1200: Information Ethics, Law, and Policy
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.

Advising

I’ve had the great pleasure of working with and learning from many wonderful graduate students over the years, here at Cornell and in my former faculty position at the University of Michigan. Here are some of them (these are some seriously fabulous people, your should check them out):

Current:
Jen Liu
Amy Cheatle
Daniel Mwesigwa
Johan Michalove
Ritik Batra

Gone but not forgotten:
Timur Uckun (now Director of IT Audit, University Audit Office, Cornell)
Jeff Mathias (now independent scholar, London UK)
Palashi Vaghela (now Assistant Professor, Simon Fraser University)
Laewoo (Leo) Kang (now independent artist, Ithaca NY)
Samir Passi (now Responsible AI Researcher, Microsoft)
Maggie Jack (now Assistant Professor, New York University) 
Ranjit Singh (now Senior Researcher, Data and Society)
Samar Sabie (now Assistant Professor, University of Toronto)
Ian Arawjo (now Assistant Professor, Université de Montréal)
Cindy Lin (*post-doc; now Assistant Professor, Penn State University)
Jakko Kemper (*doctoral visitor; now Lecturer, University of Amsterdam)
Stephanie Jordan (now Assistant Professor, Michigan State University)
Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed (now Associate Professor, University of Toronto)
Lara Houston (*post-doc; now Research Fellow, Anglia Ruskin University)
Alissa Centivany (now Associate Professor, University of Western Ontario)
Dana Walker (now Lecturer, University of Pennsylvania)
Radaphat (Pae) Chongthammakun (now Office of the Administrative Courts, Thailand)
Rahmad Dawood (now Professor, Syiah Kuala University, Indonesia)
Matt Burton (now Teaching Assistant Professor, University of Pittsburgh)
Ayse Buyuktur (now Program Manager, Center for Health and Research Transformation, University of Michigan)

If you’re a prospective doctoral student or post-doctoral scholar working in related areas, feel free to email me with a description of your work and interests (but please note that I am extremely limited in my ability to take on additional students at this time). I work with and advise doctoral students in Information Science, Science and Technology Studies, and Communication (each of these fields has their own selection and admission procedures, described at the links above).

Stuff

Stuff I’m doing: biking, kayaking, music, reading, eating, organic farming.
Stuff I’m reading: John Dewey (Experience and Education), Henri Lefebvre (Rhythmanalysis), Tim Ingold (lots of stuff), Howard Becker, Adele Clarke and Leigh Star (also lots of of stuff!), William Kentridge (Six Drawing Lessons), Myles Horton and Paulo Freire (We Make the Road By Walking); Michael Phillips (The Holistic Orchard), Sheryl Smith (Raising Goats for Dummies).
Stuff I’m listening to: Bill Evans, Django Reinhardt, and Thelonious Monk (always)!; Robert Glasper, Kamasi Washington, Richard Buckner, Sufjan Stevens, Bon Iver, Benjamin Clementine; history and philosophy podcasts, and CBC Ideas.