ABOUT ME
A philosopher by training, I work at the intersection of technology, ethics, and policy. My research aims to highlight normative issues in the design, development, and use of digital technologies, and to clarify conceptual issues that stand in the way of addressing them through law and other forms of governance. At the moment, I'm especially focused on questions about privacy, online influence, and automated decision-making.
I am the Haile Family Early Career Professor and assistant professor in the College of Information Sciences & Technology, research associate in the Rock Ethics Institute, and affiliated faculty member in the Philosophy Department at Penn State University.
At Penn State, I organize and run the Data Studies Group — an interdisciplinary hub for faculty members and graduate students interested in exploring data, datafication, and digital life through critical, humanistic, and social scientific lenses. If you want to get involved, please reach out!
NEWS
Prospective students: I'm currently recruiting. If you're interested in pursuing an MS or PhD and our research interests align, get in touch!
- I joined the Notre Dame Technology Ethics Center's "TEC Talks" podcast for a conversation about my recent essay, "Data and the Good?" [10/2022]
- New funding — Jen Wagner (PI), Laura Cabrera, Sara Gerke, and I were awarded NIH funding to study the ethics of synthetic data! [10/2022]
- New paper — I published a short, invited essay on "Data and the Good?" in the latest issue of Surveillance & Society. [9/2022]
- New paper — Kiel Brennan-Marquez and I published "Privacy, Autonomy, and the Dissolution of Markets" in the Knight First Amendment Institute's Data & Democracy Essay Series. [8/2022]
- New paper — I published "Decision Time: Normative Dimensions of Algorithmic Speed" in the 2022 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (FAccT '22). [6/2022]
- Jeremy Seeman and I presented new work-in-progress — "Between Privacy and Utility: On Differential Privacy in Theory and Practice" — at the 2022 Privacy Law Scholars Conference. [6/2022]
- I visited John Danaher's excellent Philosophical Disquisitions podcast to talk about the ethics of predictive policing and related automated decision-making technologies. [4/2022]
- I'm excited to join the Privacy Law Scholars Conference (PLSC) Program and Planning Committee! [1/2022]
- New paper — I contributed a chapter on "Predictive Policing and the Ethics of Preemption" to The Ethics of Policing: New Perspectives on Law Enforcement. [7/2021]
- New paper — Vincent Grimaldi and I presented our paper "Measuring Automated Influence: Between Empirical Evidence and Ethical Values" at the 2021 ACM/AAAI Conference on AI, Ethics, and Society. [5/2021]