I am socio-cultural anthropologist. I received my Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. My research looks at how technologies limit, enable, and program their users. My PhD dissertation, based on a long-term ethnographic fieldwork, addresses human-computer interaction and user experience in the Persian blogosphere. I examine how the technological medium contributes to the creation of blogger’s identities and how, in turn, the selves fashioned in interaction with and communication through digital media affect social and political transformation.

I am also interested in the future of work in the current algorithmically-controlled business architectures where the contemporary technology culture of creative entrepreneurial labor, the emergent post-corporate economy, and the cultural logic of neoliberal capitalism seek to shift the burden of care and responsibility from social institutions to individuals.

Introduction to Cultural Anthropology ANTH 100A 002