Ian Yigang Qin
This is Ian. I'm a fourth-year PhD student in Information Science and Technology at Syracuse University, working with Dr. EunJeong Cheon.
My research disciplines are Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Science and Technology Studies (STS). I draw on my training in sociology, anthropology, and informatics to ask questions about the production of digital technologies and the entanglement with societies. My work tries to understand the processes of producing and consuming digital technologies, focusing on three interconnected mechanisms:
- How political economy and culture shape technology imagination, production, and use;
- How technologies reconfigure labor processes, work practices, and skills;
- How technologies affect social reproduction and inequalities.
My long-term goal of doing research is to understand technologies' roles in enabling reproduction and transformation of capitalism. As capitalist materialities and socialites penetrate every sphere of modern human experience, this for me necessitates examining technologies as simultaneously material and cultural in contexts ranging from interpersonal relationship, family, production site, to civil discussion, cultural industry, moral economy, state governance, international relations, and many more. I draw on the rich and provocative thoughts left by Marxists around the world to further our critical understanding of technologies.
The way I examine these issues are ethnographic, interpretive, and theoretical. It structures how I conduct interviews, fieldwork, and discourse analysis.
My work received several awards in leading HCI conferences, including Honorable Mention Award in Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2025), and Recognition for Contribution to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Computer-Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW 2024). I also frequently present at meetings of Society for Social Studies of Science (4S).
Ian Yigang Qin
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