I’m an anthropologist who has spent more than 20 years at an engineering school. I’m Professor of Anthropology at Olin College of Engineering (where I recently served as Dean of Faculty) and a Visiting Fellow on the Robotics, Ethics, and Society team at RAI Institute (The Robotics and AI Institute) in Cambridge, Mass.

My work starts from human-centered questions: How and why do we create technology, and what does it mean for the people and communities who live with it? I almost always do this work in collaboration (with engineers, computer scientists, roboticists, humanists, and fellow social scientists), drawing on qualitative and quantitative approaches. I love the moments when someone says, “Oh, I wasn’t thinking of it that way. What do you mean?” That’s where the best insights come from.

In the past few years, I’ve been working with colleagues to think about how rapid changes in artificial intelligence push us to rethink teaching and learning as well as the role of technology in everyday life.

Right now I’m working on:

1. Robotics and society (at RAI): labor and safety in robotics, and the potential role of robots in eldercare.

2. Responsible AI education (NSF-funded): immersing engineering and computing students in real-world contexts so they learn to build and deploy AI with social science perspectives in mind.

3. A book on a 150-year-old New England textile mill: outsourcing, precarious labor, technology, gender, and business competition.

I also love building things with people: courses, programs, and teams. I joined Olin before it had graduates and before it was accredited. As Dean of Faculty, I led faculty hiring and development across STEM, the arts, humanities, and social sciences. I’m a note taker and an organizer at heart, and I care a lot about what makes collaboration work, so that people feel they belong and know their work matters.

I’m the author of the books Retirement on the Line: Age, Work, and Value in an American Factory and Juki Girls, Good Girls: Gender and Cultural Politics in Sri Lanka’s Global Garment Industry, and producer of the documentary film My Name is Julius. I received my Ph.D. and M.A. in cultural anthropology from the University of Chicago and my B.A. in anthropology from Bates College.