Lilly Irani

Assistant Professor
UC San Diego, Department of Communication
lirani ( at ) ucsd.edu
Graduated from UC Irvine, Department of Informatics in 2013

My work examines design practices in situ to understand their relationships with broader cultural, political, and social processes. To date, I have investigated these issues through ethnographic fieldwork of a design studio in India, as well as through ethnography and activism in the crowdsourcing platform Amazon Mechanical Turk.

I bring to my analyses the methodologies of Science and Technology Studies and HCI, examining technology as both social and intricately material phenomena. I also draw on four years of professional experience as a User Experience Designer at Google and technical training in Computer Science (BS, MS Stanford University). I draw on these experiences as both as a source of research problems and a source of insight on how technical practices are shaped by institutions, politics, and culture.

I was advised by Paul Dourish. I also work with Melissa Mazmanian (Informatics), Kavita Philip (History), and Keith Murphy (Anthropology).

My research has been funded by the Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Fellowship, National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, NSF Virtual Organizations as Sociotechnical Systems, and a Intel People and Practices@UCI Research Grant.

Previously, I spent four years at Google as a User Experience Designer.I have an M.S. in Computer Science specializing in Human-Computer Interaction, a B.S. in Computer Science with honors in Science, Technology, and Society, both from Stanford University.