Steve Jackson

Associate Professor
Information Science

Vice-Provost for Academic Innovation

Biography

Steve Jackson is an Associate Professor of Information Science and Science and Technology Studies, with additional graduate field appointments in Communication and Public Affairs.  He’s also the former Chair of Information Science and Dean of William Keeton House. Since July of 2023, he has also served as Vice-Provost for Academic Innovation at Cornell.

Dr. Jackson teaches and conducts research in the areas of technology ethics, law and policy; maintenance, repair and sustainability; and technology, inequality and global development.  His work is shaped by ideas coming out of American pragmatism, critical theory, and science and technology studies, and methodological traditions coming out of sociology, anthropology, philosophy, history, media studies, and law, along with information science sub-fields like human-computer interaction and computer-supported cooperative work.  He’s especially interested in places where new computing infrastructures and practices meet the social and material world, with implications for collaboration, sustainability, development, inequality, and new (and old) cultural practices, including in music and art.  He’s also interested in places where new computing practices meet unsettled legal and ethical terrains, and the processes by which these uncertainties get reduced, codified and normalized.  His research with students and collaborators has been supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (including an NSF CAREER award), the Social Science Research Council, Ford Foundation, Sloan Foundation, World Bank, Intel Research, Atkinson Center for Sustainability, and the Canadian Social Science and Humanities Research Council, and has received 6 best paper awards (and 12 honorable mentions) at leading venues in the computing and information science field.

Research Interests

• Critical Data Studies
• Ethics, Law and Policy
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Infrastructure Studies
• Social Computing and Computer-supported Cooperative Work
• Technology and Equity

Education

• Ph.D. (Communication and Science Studies), University of California, San Diego, 2005
• M.A. (Political Economy), Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, 1999
• B.A. (English and Creative Writing), Concordia University, Montreal, Canada, 1994