Leading Technology and Society Researcher Joins Georgetown for the Year To Fuel Cross-Campus Innovation

Georgetown has announced that danah boyd , a leading expert and researcher at Microsoft Research who studies the intersection of technology and society has joined Georgetown as part of Georgetown’s new Center for Digital Ethics and Tech & Society Initiative, a network of centers across the university that shape technology’s impact on ethics and policy for the public good. boyd will help drive cross-campus collaboration among interdisciplinary faculty members, host lectures and seminars, and teach a spring course that examines evidence-based policymaking and data. 

An internationally recognized authority on technology and society, boyd is a partner researcher at Microsoft Research, an advanced research laboratory where she studies how technology and society interact, with a focus on how structural inequalities are reconfigured through technology. boyd is also the founder of Data & Society, an independent research institute, and author of It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens. Most recently, boyd has been conducting an ethnographic study of the 2020 U.S. Census to understand how data is made legitimate; findings from this study will be published in an upcoming book.

“danah boyd is an internationally renowned leader in the interface between emerging technologies and their effects on society,” says Robert M. Groves, provost of Georgetown University. “Her participation in classes and meetings with faculty and students will make us better. Further, her experience in building new organizations will be useful as we launch the Center for Digital Ethics.”

‘World-Class Thinker’

boyd’s work will support Georgetown’s newly launched Center for Digital Ethics, a central hub for digital ethical research and innovation within the university’s Tech & Society Initiative. boyd’s own multi-faceted background, research and experience will help catalyze connections between scholars and practitioners focused on the intersection of technology and policy, says Paul Ohm, chair of the Tech & Society Initiative’s Steering Committee and a professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center.

“danah boyd is exactly the kind of world-class thinker and doer we need to help scholars and practitioners address some of the world’s most pressing issues, from privacy and surveillance to speech and democracy to racial justice and civil rights,” he said. “I am so thrilled she will be serving as a distinguished visiting professor this year to help us lay a strong foundation for the future of our Center for Digital Ethics and Tech & Society Initiative.”

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