My courses run from large undergraduate lectures on the social life of technology to hands-on robot prototyping and graduate research seminars. Across all of them, students learn to treat technology as a social and technical process at once, and to build and critique it accordingly.
New · Spring 2027
INFO-I224
Robots in Society
Social and Ethical Perspectives on Robotics · Undergraduate
The 21st century is "the age of robots," according to stories told in the media, robotics labs, corporate boardrooms, and government offices. These futuristic narratives represent robots as technological solutions for myriad social problems — an aging society, social isolation, child-care challenges, service needs, even mental and physical disorders. This course engages critically with the social, cultural, and ethical meaning and impacts of robotic technologies.
How will communities be affected by robots taking on roles as companions, teachers, caretakers, and mediators? If robots are vehicles for transcending human physical limits, what does it mean to be human? How does having embodied robots in our midst affect our experiences of agency, autonomy, dignity, and privacy? Drawing on anthropology, sociology, philosophy, history, cognitive science, and fiction, we examine robots as cultural artifacts and social constructs.
Students will learn
- —Social and ethical perspectives on robot design, application, and impact
- —Critical frameworks for imagining alternative designs and meanings for robots
- —How to build and present an independent research project to an interdisciplinary audience
Signature assignments
- —Robot Imaginary — a team speculative design-fiction project
- —Robot book report — from Vonnegut's Player Piano to Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun
Topics include: living in the age of robots · automation and labor · robots in the home · relating to robots · caring (for) robots · agency and responsibility · limits of robot intelligence · cross-cultural perspectives · robot ecologies · designing the future
Core readings: Nye, Technology Matters · Darling, The New Breed · Turkle, Alone Together · Nourbakhsh, Robot Futures · Mindell, Our Robots, Our Selves
Undergraduate & Graduate
INFO-I440 / I540
Human-Robot Interaction
A survey of the emerging field of HRI, covering robot form and function, methods for HRI research and design, real-world applications in service, health, education, and entertainment, and the social and cultural factors shaping robot design. Readings span robotics, psychology, HCI, cognitive science, design, and ethics.
Lectures and discussion combine with Arduino labs and hands-on work, culminating in an original prototype human-robot interaction system that students design, build, and evaluate.
Assessment: final prototype project (50%) · warm-up responses · robot film review · lab tutorials and participation
Taught most fall semesters since 2010
Undergraduate
INFO-I202
Introduction to Social Informatics
Social informatics studies the design, uses, and effects of information technologies. Rather than tracing the "social impact" of technology, the course examines how social contexts shape the form and character of technology — and how technology in turn influences society, affects power relations, and restructures social and organizational networks.
Students learn that the design and use of information technology is a social and a technical process, apply frameworks describing how technologies operate in society, and analyze contemporary sociotechnical issues from multiple perspectives through sustained writing.
Format: lecture with discussion sections · take-home assignments, participation, and exams
Graduate
INFO-I502
Human-Centered Research Methods in Informatics
A survey of research methods from the social sciences and humanities as they apply to informatics — from detailed ethnographic observation of a few settings to broad surveys of large user groups, from interpretive discourse analysis to quantitative modeling. No single method answers every question, so informatics researchers need fluency across the range.
Students learn to match research questions to appropriate methods, interpret results critically, weigh the role of research ethics in structuring inquiry, and apply these methods to their own research domain.
Assessment: an original human-centered research proposal, developed through drafts, peer review, IRB training, and a final presentation
Graduate Seminar
INFO-I709
Computing, Culture, and Society
An advanced seminar on theory and research at the intersections of culture, science, technology, and society — drawing on science and technology studies, history of computing, anthropological studies of science, and design to understand how society and technoscience are co-constructed.
Topics include the cultural construction of science and technology, organizational cultures, the politics of computing, technology and the self, and critical consideration of sociotechnical futures. Students build a collective "cognitive map" of the field and situate their own research within it.
Skills developed: critical reading and collegial communication · problem-centered interdisciplinary research · synthesis of themes for individual scholarship
Graduate Practicum
INFO-I590
LAIDEL
The Luddy Artificial Intelligence Development and Experience Laboratory is a selective on-campus research practicum where graduate students develop new AI applications or apply existing AI technology to new problems, working directly with external organizations and industry partners such as Salesforce and Eli Lilly.
Partners supply a real-world problem specification; student teams propose and execute a solution. Projects have spanned data engineering, natural language and image processing, UX design, digital marketing, project management, and technical communication.
Format: variable credit (1–3) · mentorship from instructors and corporate partners
