Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Sarah Fox @perhaxis.bsky.social · 14h

Don't miss this chance! Cella is a force and any department would be lucky to have her.

Cella (is on the job market) @cellllla.bsky.social · 14h

✨I’m on the academic job market ✨

I’m a PhD candidate at @hcii.cmu.edu studying tech, labor, and resistance 👩🏻‍💻💪🏽💥

I research how workers and communities contest harmful sociotechnical systems and shape alternative futures through everyday resistance and collective action

More info: cella.io

Cella M. Sum –

cella.io

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Sarah Fox @perhaxis.bsky.social · 20d

🎉 Thrilled to share that @samshorey.bsky.social and I have signed a book contract with @ucpress.bsky.social through their Co-Opting AI Series! "Reparative AI" is about what happens when AI breaks, and how repair becomes resistance, sabotage, and a challenge to whether AI is worth saving at all.

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Sarah Fox @perhaxis.bsky.social · 21d

Jobs, jobs, jobs!

Chris Warren @chrisvvarren.bsky.social · 21d

Trying to keep my professional chill but I’m SO excited Carnegie Mellon is launching a cluster hire in computational humanities—MULTIPLE JOBS!

1. Asst Teaching Track Prof in Computational Humanities - apply.interfolio.com/173622
2. Asst Tenure Track Prof in CH - apply.interfolio.com/173626

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Sarah Fox @perhaxis.bsky.social · 23d

Couldn’t be prouder of Franky Spektor, who successfully defended her dissertation today: "Documentation as Direct Action: Alternative Data Practices for the Labor Movement"! 🎉Her work surfaces the risks of data-driven evidentiary standards that too often obscure, rather than reveal, workplace harm.

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Reposted by Sarah Fox

Cella (is on the job market) @cellllla.bsky.social · Aug 28

What can #CSCW learn from tech workers who have been involved in collective action and unionization about how to make transformative change within our field?

My new #CSCW2025 paper with Mona Wang, Anna Konvicka, and Sarah Fox seeks to answer this question.

Pre-print: arxiv.org/pdf/2508.12579

Screenshot of the CSCW 2025 paper "The Future of Tech Labor: How Workers are Organizing and Transforming the Computing Industry"

CELLA M. SUM, Carnegie Mellon University, USA
ANNA KONVICKA, Princeton University, USA
MONA WANG, Princeton University, USA
SARAH E. FOX, Carnegie Mellon University, USA

Abstract: The tech industry’s shifting landscape and the growing precarity of its labor force have spurred unionization efforts among tech workers. These workers turn to collective action to improve their working conditions and to protest unethical practices within their workplaces. To better understand this movement, we interviewed 44 U.S.-based tech worker-organizers to examine their motivations, strategies, challenges, and future visions for labor organizing. These workers included engineers, product managers, customer support specialists, QA analysts, logistics workers, gig workers, and union staff organizers. Our findings reveal that, contrary to popular narratives of prestige and privilege within the tech industry, tech workers face fragmented and unstable work environments which contribute to their disempowerment and hinder their organizing efforts. Despite these difficulties, organizers are laying the groundwork for a more resilient tech worker movement through community building and expanding political consciousness. By situating these dynamics within broader structural and ideological forces, we identify ways for the CSCW community to build solidarity with
tech workers who are materially transforming our field through their organizing efforts.

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Reposted by Sarah Fox

Sam Shorey @samshorey.bsky.social · Aug 4

Out now in the AI Hype special issue in Digital Journalism, "Automating Essential Work:"
📰 10 years of news stories
📈 tech company execs become sources when the industry shifts from traditional automation to robots
👷🏻‍♀️ 0 quotes from on-the-ground workers

doi.org/10.1080/2167...

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Sarah Fox @perhaxis.bsky.social · Jul 23

* STS folks! * CMU is hiring up to 2 tenure track faculty focused on: the intersection of tech & social change, the environmental and social impacts of science, tech, and medicine. They will be housed in History, a department of both historians and anthropologists.

apply.interfolio.com/170040

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Reposted by Sarah Fox

Emma Strubell @strubell.bsky.social · Jul 14

I did an interview w/ Pittsburgh's NPR station to share some of my views on the topic of the McCormick/Trump AI & Energy summit at CMU tomorrow. Despite being hosted at the university, there will not be opportunities for our university experts to contribute viewpoints at the event.

WESA @wesa.fm · Jul 14

President Donald Trump travels to Carnegie Mellon University Tuesday for a summit on energy and artificial intelligence. Leaders say Western Pennsylvania's universities and natural-gas deposits could be vital to both industries. But researchers are concerned about AI's energy demands.

With Trump set to attend AI & energy summit, CMU professor worries climate issues will be lost

Carnegie Mellon University professor Emma Strubell says that while AI is promising, the threat of climate change "does keep me up at night a lot"

www.wesa.fm

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Reposted by Sarah Fox

Data & Society @datasociety.bsky.social · Jun 25

New! Govt tech purchasing has never been more high stakes, yet decisions about it rarely include public input. @megyoung0.bsky.social‬, w Sarah Fox, Vinhcent Le, & Oscar J. Romero Jr, explain why such input is essential, and outline specific opportunities & tactics. datasociety.net/library/gear...

Text on a pink background that shows the title of the new primer: "Gear Shift: Driving Change in Public Sector Technology through Community Input" by Meg Young, Sarah Fox, Vinhcent Le, and Oscar J. Romero Jr. It includes a quote: "The path forward for equitable government technology requires a fundamental gear shift."

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Reposted by Sarah Fox

Haunted Nick Seaver @nickseaver.website · Jun 17

moral crumple zones as a service

Ethan Mollick @emollick.bsky.social · Jun 17

The New York Times asked me for a new job that AI will create.

I suggested "sin eater."

(lots of good discussion of many other jobs in the article: www.nytimes.com/2025/06/17/m...)

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Sarah Fox @perhaxis.bsky.social · Jun 12

Fantastic news, congratulations!!

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Sarah Fox @perhaxis.bsky.social · May 29

Hooray, congratulations!!!

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Reposted by Sarah Fox

Lilly Irani @gleemie.bsky.social · May 13

Apply to work at the UCSD Labor Center as a Program and Communications Manager! Applications close in about a week. laborcenter.ucsd.edu/get-involved...

Careers

laborcenter.ucsd.edu

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Reposted by Sarah Fox

Tamara Kneese @tamigraph.bsky.social · Feb 26

New pub out from @davidthewid.bsky.social and me. We suggest that computer science should learn from anthropology’s critical examination of its colonial roots. AI for good projects like low resource NLP resemble early salvage anthropology projects, where anthros tried to preserve “dying” languages

Salvage Anthropology and Low-Resource NLP: What Computer Science Should Learn from the Social Sciences | Interactions

This forum focuses on the conditions and futures of the labor underpinning technology production and maintenance. We welcome standalone articles as well as interviews and conversations about all tech ...

dl.acm.org

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Reposted by Sarah Fox

Miriam Posner @miriamposner.com · Dec 5

Students should study the humanities not because it makes them better workers but because it rips you open and breaks your brain and changes everything you thought you knew. I *promise* you this. I *promise* it has this ability, no matter how smart you think you are. I have seen it countless times.

Lauren Ginsberg @laurenginsberg.bsky.social · Dec 5

Hearing the president of KU say that the way the humanities can protect itself - a question asked by a humanities professor of Spanish - is that her field should direct its public voice to how the Spanish language can impact AI versus the third study of an obscure play…. Just sigh.

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