About

I am an interdisciplinary researcher drawn to studying—and building—computational cultures that refuse, resist, subvert, or exceed the state and market imaginaries of technology. As a community organizer and researcher, I have worked across South Asia, the U.S. South, and now the U.S. Pacific Northwest, studying how computational technologies are used and appropriated to liberatory ends, tracing possibilities in computation for such subversion and appropriation, while co-designing tools of resistance in solidarity.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Sociology
• Political Science
• Engineering
• Knowledge management
• Artificial Intelligence
• Social Science
• Systems engineering
• Medicine
• World Wide Web
• Public relations
• Gender studies
• Economics
• Media studies
• Law
• Gerontology
• Economic growth
• Library science
• Management science

Selected publications

• From Data Activism to Activism in a Time of Data-Centrism: Affirming Epistemological Heterogeneity in Social Movements

  Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction · 2025-05-02 · 4 citations

  articleOpen access

  In this paper, we seek to understand how grassroots activists, operating within the hegemony of data-centrism, are often disempowered by data even as they appropriate it towards their own ends. We posit that the shift towards data-driven governance and organizing, by elevating a particular epistemology, can pave over other ways of knowing that are central to social movement practices. Building on Muravyov's [102] concept of ''epistemological ambiguity,'' we demonstrate how data-focused activism requires complex navigations between data-based epistemologies and the heterogeneous, experiential, and relational epistemologies that characterize social movements. Through three case studies (two drawn from existing literature and the third being an original analysis), we provide an analytical model of how generative epistemological refusals can support more value-aligned navigations of epistemological ambiguity that resist data-centrism. Finally, we suggest how these findings can inform pedagogy, research, and technology design to support communities navigating datafied political arenas.

  PublisherDOI

• The Cruel Optimism of Tech Work: Tech Workers' Affective Attachments in the Aftermath of 2022-23 Tech Layoffs

  2025-04-24 · 3 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• The Role of ICTs in the Maintenance and Reproduction of Digital Border Assemblages

  2025-04-24 · 4 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Research and/as Relation: Documenting Experiences of Community-Collaborative Researchers in HCI

  Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction · 2025-10-16 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Community-collaborative approaches (CCA) have been proposed as more equitable ways to engage communities in research, as they urge researchers to commit to long-term relationships with community members than with other participatory methods. However, the normative structures of HCI and computing research can present challenges in pursuing CCA for the researchers and community partners involved. This paper offers insights into: i) how research and relation impact each other, and ii) how we can conceptualize research as a mode of relation. We present our findings from eighteen semi-structured interviews with community-collaborative researchers in computing and HCI. We then ground our paper in theories of relation and relationality from Caribbean thought, Black studies, and Indigenous scholarship to apply a conceptual framework of relation to our findings. Through this work, we aim to interrogate what it means to center relationality in CCA, beyond and within the development of scientific research.

  PublisherDOI

• Concept of Operations as Epistemic Object: The Sociotechnical Design Roles of a Systems Engineering Document

  Proceedings of the ACM on Human-Computer Interaction · 2024 · 3 citations

  • Computer Science
  • Knowledge management
  • Computer Science

  When large, complex interorganizational collaborations create new systems, they must discover how the system should work and how it should integrate into the overall organizational milieu. These collaborations must also draw upon and accommodate a host of processes and resources. In this paper, we present results from a qualitative case study of a key policy and process document for a large design project for a civic traffic management system that must serve multiple organizations and government agencies. The document is one common to systems engineering, but less familiar to CSCW: the Concept of Operations (ConOps). We describe the sociotechnical design functions of the ConOps. We also analyze the document and its developmental process using Ewenstein and Whyte's concept of epistemic objects," which has been useful for CSCW and design research scholars to understand the roles artifacts play in the messy processes of design and cooperative work. We find that the ConOps exhibits many qualities of an epistemic object and supports the deeply integrated work of "designing" both the system and the interorganizational collaboration itself. We then explore avenues for future research in similarly complex infrastructural design settings.

  PublisherDOI

• What to the Muslim is Internet search: Digital Borders as Barriers to Information

  2024-05-11 · 9 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  In today’s digital age, searching for information online is considered a ubiquitous task that can be accomplished in just a few moments using various web-based technologies. Yet, information seeking has geopolitical burdens for users who are racialized and marginalized by the nation-state and other structures of power. In our paper, we conducted a qualitative interview study with 15 Muslim participants, mostly of South Asian origin, living in the US with varying citizenship or (non)immigration status about their information needs and concerns around privacy as a Muslim, and the resulting restrictive patterns of information seeking on various Internet platforms. We argue that our findings on the barriers faced and strategies employed by Muslim residents toward information access suggest a broader pattern of digital manifestations of border imperialism. We posit that HCI researchers should pay attention to how “digital borders" have epistemic implications for people marginalized by geopolitical boundaries.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Back to “ Back to Labor” : Revisiting Political Economies of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work

  2023-10-13 · 14 citations

  articleSenior author

  Almost thirty years ago, CSCW published an article written by Joan Greenbaum detailing how and why CSCW should consider the framing of “labor” over “work” in researching and designing information systems [17]. This argument is especially salient in the present day, with the increasing wariness of algorithmically-mediated monitoring, surveillance, automation, and management in work processes. Despite its salience, Greenbaum’s paper has had relatively low engagement in CSCW so far. As such, this workshop responds to Greenbaum’s call-to-action, asking: 1) Where is CSCW research now in thinking about “work” vs. “labor” in designing systems? and 2) How can we support emerging CSCW scholars in grounding themselves in theories of work that includes—if not centers—a labor-oriented economic frame? Following a Freirean pedagogy model of social action involving a cycle of reflection and action, this workshop will aim to generate a critical consciousness around labor issues in CSCW. Ultimately, by crafting individual commitments to labor, this workshop will aim to contribute to a more worker-centered future.

  PublisherDOI

• Design Values in Action: Toward a Theory of Value Dilution

  2023-07-10 · 18 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Designing for values has been a focus of human-computer interaction research, but what happens when value-laden design artifacts are put into practice? Do they exercise their commitment to stated design values? We present four case studies that suggest a gap between the values that technologies set out to support and their performance toward supporting these values in practice. By critically analyzing these case studies, we theorize the phenomenon of value dilution—technical artifacts moving away from values they committed to embody. We hypothesize two significant methodological gaps contributing to value dilution—the static framing of stakeholders and a lack of engagement with politics of values. We argue that addressing value dilution needs to be a long-term and ongoing task in the design and use of technology as values in design are not only embodied, but also they are dynamic, subject to change in how they are enacted.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Surfacing Structural Barriers to Community-Collaborative Approaches in Human-Computer Interaction

  2023 · 8 citations

  • Computer Science
  • Library science
  • Gerontology

  extended-abstract Share on Surfacing Structural Barriers to Community-Collaborative Approaches in Human-Computer Interaction Authors: Calvin Alan Liang University of Washington, United States University of Washington, United States 0000-0002-3795-3441View Profile , Emily Tseng Cornell Tech, United States Cornell Tech, United States 0000-0003-1087-1101View Profile , Akeiylah Dewitt University of Washington, United States University of Washington, United States 0000-0002-4534-7273View Profile , Yasmine Kotturi Carnegie Mellon University, United States Carnegie Mellon University, United States 0000-0001-6201-7922View Profile , Sucheta Ghoshal University of Washington, United States University of Washington, United States 0000-0002-9990-7221View Profile , Angela D. R. Smith University of Texas at Austin, United States University of Texas at Austin, United States 0000-0001-5546-5452View Profile , Marisol Wong-Villacres Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral, Ecuador Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral, Ecuador 0000-0002-8071-6716View Profile , Lauren Wilcox Google, United States Google, United States 0000-0001-6598-1733View Profile , Sheena Erete University of Maryland College Park, United States University of Maryland College Park, United States 0000-0003-2819-1083View Profile Authors Info & Claims CSCW '23 Companion: Companion Publication of the 2023 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Social ComputingOctober 2023Pages 542–546https://doi.org/10.1145/3584931.3611294Published:14 October 2023Publication History 0citation89DownloadsMetricsTotal Citations0Total Downloads89Last 12 Months89Last 6 weeks50 Get Citation AlertsNew Citation Alert added!This alert has been successfully added and will be sent to:You will be notified whenever a record that you have chosen has been cited.To manage your alert preferences, click on the button below.Manage my AlertsNew Citation Alert!Please log in to your account Save to BinderSave to BinderCreate a New BinderNameCancelCreateExport CitationPublisher SiteGet Access

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• Decolonizing the Internet by Decolonizing Ourselves: Challenging Epistemic Injustice through Feminist Practice

  Global Perspectives · 2021 · 12 citations

  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Sociology

  Seventy-five percent of the world’s online population is from the global South, and nearly half is projected to be women. Yet public knowledge on the internet - exemplified by Wikipedia - is primarily constructed by (white) men from western Europe and North America. One in ten Wikipedia editors are estimated to self-identify as female. In other words, the internet of the majority is produced by the minority. But Wikipedia is only one example of the deeply skewed experience of the internet: from the design and architecture of the internet, to the production and reproduction of knowledge on the internet, this globalised “public sphere” not only reflects the structural and representative inequalities of our world, it can, in many ways, amplify and deepen them. Still, the internet’s socio-technical nature can also engender potentially emancipatory processes in which communities on the “margins” of both the physical and virtual worlds can produce and curate their own knowledge online. Whose Knowledge? is a global, multilingual campaign that aims to make public knowledge and the online experience less white, male, straight, and global North in origin. Using Miranda Fricker’s concept of epistemic injustice and Linda Tuhiwai Smith’s exhortation to decolonize our methodologies, the Whose Knowledge? campaign has supported marginalised communities like Dalits from India and the diaspora, queer activists from Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the Kumeyaay Native American Nation, to begin centering their knowledge online. The authors are feminist scholars, organizers, and technologists, and we describe the practices of decolonizing ourselves in this effort, in particular our approach to embedding feminist and anti-colonial values as we decolonize design, process, and metrics. We offer these possibilities and provocations for thinking further about a future feminist decolonized internet(s).

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Amy Bruckman

  4 shared

• J. Khadijah Abdurahman

  2 shared

• G. L. Mukhopadhyay

  1 shared

• McKane Andrus

  1 shared

• Koustuv Saha

  Microsoft Research (United Kingdom)

  1 shared

• Mark Zachry

  University of Washington

  1 shared

• Udayan Tandon

  University of California, San Diego

  1 shared

• Sean A. Munson

  1 shared

Labs

• InquilabPI

  Critical computing research focusing on race and migration, agriculture, and labor.

Education

• B.S., Not specified in provided HTML

  Not specified in provided HTML

• M.S., Not specified in provided HTML

  Not specified in provided HTML

• Ph.D., Not specified in provided HTML

  Not specified in provided HTML