PhdFit
Resume-aware faculty matching

Find professors who actually fit you

Review faculty evidence in public, then use the workspace to turn your background into a shortlist, outreach, and meeting prep.

Profile-awarePaper evidenceSix agents
Morana Alac

Morana Alac

· Professor

University of California, San Diego · Communication

Active 2002–2022

h-index11
Citations899
Papers374 last 5y
Funding$206k

Academic metrics are sourced from OpenAlex and public funding records; values may differ from Google Scholar.

Faculty pageLab page
See your match with Morana Alac — sign in to PhdFit.Sign in

About

Morana Alač is a Professor in Communication and Science Studies at UC San Diego. She conducts ethnographic research of scientific laboratories and other settings of technology production and use, focusing on multimodal and multisensory aspects of ordinary interactional practice. Her areas of interest include ethnomethodology, interaction with technology, gesture, multimodality, and the senses. She holds a Ph.D. in Semiotics from the University of Bologna (2002) and a Ph.D. in Cognitive Science from UC San Diego (2006). Her work explores how social interactions are mediated through sensory and technological engagement, with a particular emphasis on the bodily and environmental continuities in laboratory settings, the sociality of robots and digital interactions, and the semiotic processes involved in scientific and everyday practices.

Research topics

  • Computer Science
  • Sociology
  • Psychology
  • Philosophy
  • Cognitive science
  • Aesthetics
  • Epistemology
  • Neuroscience
  • Social Science
  • Communication

Selected publications

  • When a robot is social: Spatial arrangements and multimodal semiotic engagement in the practice of social robotics

    Social Studies of Science · 2011-10-05 · 103 citations

    article1st authorCorresponding

    Social roboticists design their robots to function as social agents in interaction with humans and other robots. Although we do not deny that the robot's design features are crucial for attaining this aim, we point to the relevance of spatial organization and coordination between the robot and the humans who interact with it. We recover these interactions through an observational study of a social robotics laboratory and examine them by applying a multimodal interactional analysis to two moments…

    PublisherDOI

  • Social robots: Things or agents?

    AI & Society · 2015-11-07 · 95 citations

    article1st authorCorresponding
    PublisherDOI

  • Handling Digital Brains

    The MIT Press eBooks · 2011-04-22 · 61 citations

    book1st authorCorresponding

    An analysis of how fMRI researchers actively involve their bodies—with hand movements in particular—in laboratory practice. The results of fMRI brain scanning require extensive analysis in the laboratory. In Handling Digital Brains, Morana Alač shows that fMRI researchers do not sit passively staring at computer screens but actively involve their bodies in laboratory practice. Discussing fMRI visuals with colleagues, scientists animate the scans with gestures, and talk as they work with computer…

    PublisherDOI

  • Ethnomethodology, video analysis, and STS

    ArODES (HES-SO (https://www.hes-so.ch/)) · 2017-01-01 · 12 citations

    articleOpen access
    PublisherOA PDF

  • Digital Scientific Visuals as Fields for Interaction

    The MIT Press eBooks · 2014-01-24 · 12 citations

    book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

    This chapter analyzes the digital materiality of scientific visuals by examining how brain images displayed on screens are manipulated and coordinated with talk and embodied gesture in neuroscience research. Drawing upon detailed fieldwork and video analysis in an fMRI laboratory, the chapter shows how brain images function as diagrammatic signs that laboratory researchers deploy in situated, multimodal interactions. By recasting brain images as integral parts of the semiotic and interactional p…

    PublisherDOI

Recent grants

Frequent coauthors

  • Javier R. Movellan

    University of California, San Diego

    5 shared

  • Fumihide Tanaka

    University of Tsukuba

    3 shared

  • Ayşe Pınar Saygın

    Hacettepe University

    3 shared

  • Karen Emmorey

    San Diego State University

    2 shared

  • Edwin Hutchins

    University of California, San Diego

    2 shared

  • Lisa Cartwright

    University of California, San Diego

    2 shared

  • Stephen McCullough

    San Diego State University

    2 shared

  • Mohsen Malmir

    2 shared

Awards & honors

  • 2013 Book Award, Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis…

Similar researchers at University of California, San Diego

  • Resume-aware match score
  • Save to shortlist
  • AI-drafted outreach

See your match with Morana Alac

PhdFit ranks faculty by your research interests, methods, and publications — grounded in their actual work, not templates.

Sign in to PhdFitHow it works
  • Free to start
  • No credit card
  • 30-second signup